Sydneybashi-Bangla readers may have seen recent TV news, and read in the papers, of excessive recent monsoon rain and resulting severe floods in Thailand, especially in the north of Bangkok. Bangkok city proper is now under threat of flooding, its outskirts have already flooded displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Many Bangladeshi and other Asian graduates and ex-staff and faculty members from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), the international post graduate engineering institute, (located north of Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport near Rangsit), live in Sydney since late 80’s. They are sad and horrified to see their beloved AIT campus under water this week, with devastating impact especially on its equipment, labs, computer and conference centres and the library as the attached photos show. These people have many treasured memories of campus lives.
Over the weekend, the Bangkok Post has reported that the flood disaster over the past five weeks has devastated many industrial estates to the north of Bangkok, submerging thousands of industries and factories. This has made hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and as a result millions of family/household members are living in misery. This is in addition to the millions of people who are likewise suffering from severe flooding and living in shelters like departure lounge of BKK airport.
The flood will have long-term effect, and once flood water recedes, inevitable health issues will arise, as well as huge cleaning, infrastructure and community building effort need to be undertaken. It will take long time for Thailand to recover from the impact of this devastating flood, and Thailand’s disaster preparedness was and still is miniscule, the report indicates. We are so fortunate here and our hope and prayers at this time are for those long suffering people in and around Bangkok, including AITians in Thailand.
Helal Morshedi, Sydney (AIT, 1984-1988)
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