Overstroming (2008) in Paksuai - Update

Dit bericht had ik in september 2008 willen schrijven, 't is er toen niet van gekomen.
Nu we toch wel erg dicht in de buurt van het nieuwe regenseizoen komen is het misschien gepast om het alsnog te publiceren.
Ik stopte mijn berichtgeving over de overstroming 2008 op 19 augustus toen wij "terug op ons plaats zaten" zoals ze dat in Vlaanderen zeggen.
Ik maakte in de daaropvolgende week nog enkele beelden over de evolutie elders in het dorp.
De foto's zijn toegevoegd in het album van de overstroming (vanaf nummer 161) dus nogmaals de link naar het album in de vorm van een "grid", in de vorm van een "slideshow" , en naar enkele korte "filmpjes".
Het water trok gestaag terug richting Mekong en ik kwam toen pas te weten dat ook Paksuai  een meetpunt heeft.

Enkele van de laagst gelegen punten bleven na deze opnames nog weken onder water.

De schade aan de rijstvelden was enorm.

Dit stukje kwam zo vanonder het water,

maar zag er enkele dagen later zo uit, een (beperkte) meevaller voor de eigenaars.

Schade aan wegen en gebouwen viel enorm mee, dit

is zowat het indrukwekkendste dat ik zag, de rest was meestal met poetsen op te lossen.

De zandzakken bevestigden dat ook Nongkhai zijn deel kreeg,

er werden daar ook drastische, maar m.i. "slimme" maatregelen (de nieuw gemetselde muurtjes)genomen.

In mijn berichten vorig jaar zei ik ergens:

" Daarenboven blijven hier de geruchten circuleren over China dat momenteel een stuwmeer zou laten leeglopen. "

Die geruchten waren blijkbaar toch niet zomaar uit de lucht gegrepen.
Ik las in de Bangkok Post Online een artikel in dit verband en bewaarde de link.
Die link blijkt nu niet meer te werken maar Google bracht me toch terug bij de bewuste tekst en nog meer.

All six member countries of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) will meet in Laos late next month and Thailand may ask China to provide warnings of the timing and volume of water to be released from its upstream dams as several areas in Thailand and the rest of members of the agency are now battered by severe flooding, a senior Thai official said Wednesday.
Thai Deputy Interior Minister Prasong Kositanond said concerned officials are now studying details of the flooding which has affected Thailand’s northern and northeastern provinces during the past few weeks and may ask for improved cooperation from China to send the warning and volume of water to be discharged from its dams.
Without cooperation from China, Thailand’s at-risk northeastern provinces of Nong Khai and Nakhon Phanom provinces bordering Laos would face fiercer floods, said Mr Prasong.

The three Indochina countries of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, plus Myanmar and China are dialogue partners with Thailand. They are scheduled to meet in the Laotian capital of Vientiane September 25-26.

Thailand's total damage in seven Thai provinces are now estimated at Bt220 million, he said. Officials of the Interior Ministry's Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department have been sent to those provinces to assist the flood victims, except in rugged terrain.

Governors of the flood-hit provinces are allowed to disburse Bt50 million from emergency fund to initially help the victims.

Meanwhile, Burachat Buasuwan, the MRC's Thailand coordinator, said at a seminar that the agency's officials last week inspected flooding situation in five northern and northeastern provinces and believed that the waters which overflowed the Mekong river banks was due to heavy rainfall resulting from a low pressure and tropical storm that originated off southern China.

Mr. Burachat said if the flooding was caused by water released from dams in China, it would not recede very quickly.

However, Mr. Burachat said Chinese officials only provided information on water discharged from dams in the rainy season and not during the dry season.

In the past, the MRC officials had requested information from Chinese officials, but it was not forthcoming, Mr. Burachat added, it would be better if the request is made through the governments of the two countries. (TNA)

Warnings on floods faulted

MRC bulletins 'not reaching' villagers

By Anucha Charoenpo

Environmentalists have hit out at the Mekong River Commission (MRC) for allegedly failing to alert people in member countries about flooding. The Thai People's Network on Mekong, the Foundation for Ecological Recovery, the Living River Siam and the Chiang Khong Conservation Group also rejected the commission's claim that the flooding has not been caused by water released from big dams in China.

Heavy rains have caused serious flooding in the MRC's four member countries of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Water from the Mekong river has overflowed its banks and inundated villages and farmland in the four countries, with villagers complaining to non-government organisations that the MRC had failed to warn them about the problem.

The MRC, an organisation set up to manage the Mekong river, issued a statement on Friday about the ongoing flooding. It claimed the present flood situation was the result of meteorological and hydrological conditions and not caused by water released from dams in China.

The volume of water stored behind the Chinese dams was far too small to cause flooding downstream, it said.

The flood being experienced at present is the result of water run-off in the northern part of the Mekong basin following heavy rainfall caused by tropical storm Kammuri.

The commission said it has monitored the flooding situation and issued warnings via its website and daily bulletins sent by fax to NGOs and the public.

Pienporn Deetes, a coordinator of the Chiang Mai-based Living River Siam, said she and her colleagues did not understand why the MRC had issued such a statement which was inconsistent with information she had.

''We can't accept that the MRC, which is representative of the four countries, has given untrue information to help protect China,'' Ms Pienporn said.

She said the severe flooding had caused serious hardship to people living along the Mekong river in Chiang Saen and Chiang Khong districts of Chiang Rai and in Nong Khai provinces.

Many affected people never received any warning from the MRC, which should have distributed the information through local officials and NGOs in those provinces.

''The MRC claimed that it had posted flood warnings on its website. In reality, do villagers use the internet and can they read English warnings? Even our organisations have never received any flood warnings from it,'' she said.

She called on the MRC to provide the public with actual information about the flooding which was caused by water released from three main dams _ Manwan, Dachaoshan and Jinghong _ in China.

She claimed that the total storage capacity of the three dams was 16,683 million cubic metres and this was enough to regulate water flow in the northern part of the Mekong river, including a large area in northern Thailand.

The Manwan dam alone had a storage capacity of 14,560 million cubic metres, while the biggest dam in Thailand, the Bhumibol dam, had a capacity of only 13,462 million cubic metres.

She said the other two upstream dams in China, Dachaoshan and Jinghong, have storage capacities of 890 million cubic metres and 1,233 million cubic metres, respectively.

Somkiat Khuaenchiangsa, a coordinator of the Chiang Khong Conservation Group, said the MRC has not disclosed the whole truth about the flooding.

The commission had avoided providing information about the severe flooding in Chiang Saen, which he said had been caused by natural rainfall as well as water released from the dams.

He said he was certain that the blasting of Mekong islets to clear the way for Chinese cargo ships was also another cause of heavy flooding.

The absence of the islets had resulted in the river flowing much faster than normal.

To prevent future floods, Mr Somkiat proposed that the MRC hold urgent talks

Bangkok Post

MRC defends China over Thai floods
Mekong basin flooding worst in 100 years

APINYA WIPATAYOTIN

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) defended China's dam operations yesterday which have been blamed by environmentalists for being a cause of the severe flooding in Thailand's north and northeastern provinces. The flooding is said to be the worst in 100 years in the Mekong river basin.

''The current water levels are entirely the result of the meteorological and hydrological conditions and were not caused by the release of water from the Chinese dams, as their storage volume was far too small to affect the flood hydrology of the Mekong,'' according to an MRC statement released yesterday.

The flooding, which has wreaked havoc in Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos, and in Chiang Rai, Nan, Loei, Nong Khai, and Mukdahan provinces since early this week, was due to the above-average rainfall during the first months of the monsoon season which saturated the river catchments, providing a bigger flood runoff.

''These conditions resulted in high river levels than usual and were compounded by tropical storm Kammuri between Aug 8-10,'' said the MRC _ a river basin organisation.

The commission's statement backs Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and the Water Resources Department's theory that the Mekong flooding had nothing to do with the Chinese dams.

Mr Samak said yesterday that he believes the water runoff was caused by an excessive amount of rainfall, not discharge from Chinese dams.

China has built three large-scale dams on the Mekong river_Manwan, Dachaoshan, and Jinghong, which was just completed in June.

Locals and environmentalists here suspect the dams and the blasting of the Mekong islets to clear the way for Chinese cargo ships navigating up and down the Mekong was causing extreme highs and lows in the Mekong.

Water Resources deputy chief Thanade Dawasuwan said a massive increase in the water volume worsened the runoff and inundated the communities along the Mekong, which is fed by many tributaries.

''Blaming China [for the floods] without solid evidence would only hurt relations between the two countries,'' said Mr Thanade.

However, he admitted that the department only had little information on Chinese dam operations.

''China is not a member of the MRC, so the agency cannot compel them to disclose information. However, we will seek their cooperation and reveal whatever information we can,'' he said.

Montree Chantawong, campaign coordinator of the Bangkok-based Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (Terra), said the current flooding was proof that Chinese dams could not prevent flooding downstream as the Chinese government had claimed.

Although it can't be said for sure if the Chinese dams were to blame for the inundation, they are certainly contributing to the ecological and hydrological changes in the river.

Meanwhile, the disaster prevention office in Nong Khai yesterday declared three districts disaster zones after water from the Mekong flooded the districts, causing damage to residential and agricultural areas.

The Royal Irrigation Department reported that floodwaters in Chiang Rai, Nan, and Loei were receding, but the situation in Nong Khai was still very bad.

The department expects the situation to improve within a few days.

Bangkok Post

Even Googelen met "Mekong flood 2008" brengt de geïnteresseerde lezer desgewenst nog meer literatuur.

De MRC website is, zoals vorig jaar reeds beschreven, een accurate bron van informatie gebleken.
Het duurde enkele dagen maar eens Phan overtuigd was dat de voorspellingen, weliswaar rekening houdend met een vertraging tussen Nongkhai en Paksuai, betrouwbaar waren begon ze er bij haar dagelijkse bezoeken aan de (nood)markt over te vertellen. Spijtig genoeg was het kwaad toen reeds geschied.

Ik heb intussen het grafiekje voor Nongkhai, 

op mijn iGoogle startpagina staan zodat het me dagelijks enkele keren in het oog springt, we beginnen dus beter gewapend aan het nieuwe regenseizoen.

Nog een aanvulling n.a.v. de reactie van Peter.
Vanzelfsprekend gaat een grafiekje geen overstroming tegenhouden, je moet het ten eerste al ter beschikking hebben, je moet de vertraging van Nongkhai naar Paksuai kunnen inschatten en je moet de ligging van het terrein t.o.v. de Mekong kennen.
Niet vanzelfsprekend om al die voorwaarden voldaan te hebben, maar ...

Een situatie als deze in een bepaald deel in het dorp (Kudlat) had mogelijk kunnen vermeden worden.

De ouderen daar beloten dat er nog wel een nacht (en langer) zou overgaan eer ze bedreigd zouden zijn.
Om 2 uur 's nachts moest iemand alarm slaan en moesten ze hulp gaan inroepen in het ganse dorp want hun wijk was met ongeziene snelheid aan het onderlopen.

Hadden ze geweten dat de rivier in de eerstvolgende 24 u "x" cm zou stijgen hadden ze misschien vroeger hun spullen naar boven gebracht, voertuigen in veiligheid gebracht, ...