For four long months and counting, the residents of Bang Ban, a low-lying district in Thailand’s ancient city of Ayutthaya, have lived their lives under water.
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Elderly residents must be ferried to safety by raft, schools stand closed and under the muddy surface, ruined rice fields rot.
Even Ayutthaya’s 700-year-old stupas have been submerged, their crumbling towers jutting through a murky brown deluge that shows no sign of retreat.
Annual floods are not unusual here. Each monsoon season, the Chao Phraya River – Thailand’s largest – routinely bursts its banks and Bang Ban often bears the burden of diverted water when upstream dams cannot cope.
But this year is different. The scale is catastrophic, says local politician and former rescuer Songphol Suksomboon.
“There’s so much water they don’t know what to do with it,” he told This Week in Asia. And more is on the way.
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Thailand’s water authority on Monday increased the outflow from upstream dams to 2,900 cubic metres (102,000 cubic feet) per second, all but guaranteeing that Bang Ban’s ordeal will continue.
