Bangkok’s Roads are Like Rivers

The torrential rain that we have been having in Bangkok over the last week has turned the roads into virtual rivers in less than one hour. There are apparently two problems here. One is that the city is slowly subsiding at a rate of 10 centimetres a year. Secondly, the drains that we have can only cope with 60 mm of rain per hour. But, we have been getting a lot more than that recently. Apparently, if there is more than 130 mm of rain per hour than it will take more than two hours to drain away once it has stopped raining. Unfortunately for some Sois, if they are lower than the main roads then they will find that they will flood for much longer.

Criticism over this is starting to move away from the government to the Bangkok Governor who belongs to the Democrat camp. People are asking why his new and very expensive water tunnels are not working. Good question. More work certainly needs to be done about drainage in Bangkok. Bigger and better drains need to be built. The ones we have also need to be dredged more often. We cannot rely on the prison chain gangs to do it for us. Obviously it would help if people and market vednors didn’t throw their rubbish down drains.  But, at the end of the day, we don’t get this kind of torrential rain that often. The weather front we have at the moment is expected to pass soon and we will be back to our normal cycle of heavy rains in the evenings and mornings. There will be some floods but they should go down shortly after it stops raining.

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