The 2011 Thailand floods were a series of devastating floods which struck Thailand over a period of six months in the second half of 2011. They began as a result of the monsoon season in Southeast Asia and the arrival of Storm Nock-Ten to the country in late July. They then continued for months thereafter as a series of storms and severe rainfall in many regions ensured that the waters were only beginning to recede before fresh waterfall led to new flooding. The floods impacted on 65 out of Thailand’s 77 provinces, in places leading to several meters of water inundating fields and entire industrial estates. Approximately 815 people were recorded as officially losing their lives owing to the floods, while more than 13 million people were impacted in one way or another. Several million were severely impacted in terms of damage to homes and so forth. However, the floods did not lead to a significant amount of migration out of Thailand, as the country is one of Southeast Asia’s more stable states with a good standard of living and the ability to recover from even a partially catastrophic series of floods like these.[1]
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2011 Thailand floods chronology of events
Every year Thailand experiences a monsoon season of heavy rain and storms that typically lasts from May through to October, with the peak months from July onwards. It was exactly during this timeframe that the floods of 2011 impacted the country. It began with Tropical Storm Nock-Ten, which formed out in the western Pacific Ocean on the 24th of July and passed over the Philippines westwards to the island of Hainan in China before passing over north-eastern Thailand. This brought with it the first bout of extensive rainfall, though it had been an unusually wet spring in Thailand, increasing the amount of moisture in the ground. Further heavy rainfall continued through all of August 2011, creating floodwaters across large parts of Thailand.[2]
The monsoon rains were still very heavy through September and October 2011, a fact which is possibly attributable to the La Niña effect in the Pacific Ocean at this time. Heavy floods rose up to half a meter in many places and several meters in certain environments. The country’s flood defenses and dams were also switched to have increased discharge rates to keep them from overflowing. By late September the build-up of floodwaters in the lowlands of Thailand was such that irrigation canals were bursting, paddy fields were completely flooded and in many places people were getting around on boats of varying kinds.[3]
In October much of Bangkok was impacted as canals and dams in and around the capital were breached. At this stage interventions were made to prevent the downtown area of the city from being completely flooded and some people left the city. These were broadly successful, though large parts of the suburbs remained flooded for weeks.[4] In the end residual flooding in certain parts of the country only came to an end in January 2012, such was the sheer volume of floodwater. Longitudinal studies suggest that the ultimate cost of the floods will exceed fifty billion US dollars.[5]
The economic impact of the floods was vast and not just isolated to Thailand’s domestic economy. There are many high-tech international companies like Sony, Honda and Toshiba with operations in Thailand that suffered considerable damage to their factories and operations in the country. Thailand’s ubiquitous tourist sector was also hit by the floods. As a result, the American financial bank, J. P. Morgan, estimated that the floods had set industrial production globally back by 2.5% in 2011. Sony alone recorded a net loss of over two billion US dollars, all developments which point to the enormous costs of such natural disasters as they abound in the twenty-first century.[6]
Extent of migration and demographic impact of the floods
The floods in Thailand in 2011 are believed to have resulted in the deaths of 815 people. They also temporarily displaced several hundred thousand people and impacted on millions more in one form or another. However, they did not spark any outward migration to a great extent. Mass flight from a country following a natural disaster like this usually takes place in poor countries where the destruction of a home spurs emigration, especially so where a government is too poor to be in a position to offer aid in reconstruction. In Thailand’s case, it is one of the richest countries in Southeast Asia and people’s prospects here are still good regardless of the floods. A group that was particularly susceptible to emigration in the aftermath was the hundreds of the thousands of refugees in Thailand whose status in the country was already precarious. However, the region along the border with Myanmar where many of these people live in settlements like Mae La refugee camp was one of the few parts of the country that escaped severe flooding. Thus, the migratory and demographic impact of the 2011 Thailand floods was not as substantial in the long term as it could have been.[7]
See also
Explore more about the 2011 Thailand floods
- 2011 Thailand Floods at PreventionWeb: The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
- The Great 2011 Thailand Flood Disaster Revisited at ScienceDirect
- Thailand Floods: Bangkok 'Impossible to Protect' at BBC News
References
- ↑ Emma L. Gale and Mark A. Saunders, ‘The 2011 Thailand Floods: Climate Causes and Return Periods’, in Weather, Vol. 68, No. 9 (September, 2013), pp. 233–237.
- ↑ https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9d99c3114d3943cab4cf1622cee17174
- ↑ Ho Huu Loc, ‘The Great 2011 Thailand flood disaster revisited’, in Environmental Research, Vol. 216, No. 2 (January, 2023).
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15615876
- ↑ M. Tanoue, et al., ‘Estimation of Direct and Indirect Economic Losses Caused by a Flood With Long-Lasting Inundation: Application to the 2011 Thailand Flood’, in Water Resources Research, Vol. 56, No. 5 (May, 2020).
- ↑ Patrick Phongsathorn, ‘Environment and Migration: The 2011 Floods in Thailand’, in The State of Environmental Migration, Vol. 2 (2011), pp. 13–23.
- ↑ https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/thailands-epic-floods-no-barrier-service