Flood Warning: Residents Along the Mun River

The Provincial Disaster Prevention Office warns that the level of the Mun River to rise by another 50 centimetres over the next 48 hours. Residents of low-lying areas in Warin Chamrap and Mueang districts are advised to move to higher ground possible.

Temporary shelters have been opened at six schools and two temples. A full list is available on the provincial website. Please bring identification documents, medicines and enough clothes for at least three days. Pets are welcome they are kept on a lead or in a cage.

Do not try to drive or walk through moving water. Just 15 centimetres of fast-moving water can knock an adult their feet, and 60 centimetres can carry away a car. you need emergency help, call 1784.

Volunteers are needed at all shelters. Anyone to help should register at the shelter information desk. Updates will be broadcast every three hours on local radio posted online.

Day Five at the Shelter · from the diary of Beam Siriwong

It is our fifth night in Classroom 3. My grandmother sleeps under the whiteboard, where somebody has written “Welcome home” in green marker. I do not know who wrote it, but it smile every morning.

The shelter is crowded and noisy, it is also full of small kindnesses. A boy I had never met before my brother his football. An old man from the next street repairs everyone’s broken umbrellas without asking for .

Today I spent four hours in the kitchen. We cooked green curry for three hundred people, and by the time we finished, I could not feel my arms. Still, I felt more useful than I in weeks.

In the evening, a reporter asked me why floods are getting worse. I told her I was not an expert, but I have been thinking about it since. Our house was built on land that used to be rice fields. Rice fields hold water like a sponge; concrete does not. we keep building on the places where the river needs to spread, we will keep meeting the river in our living rooms.

When the water goes down, we will clean the house and start again. That is what people here do. But I hope that this time the adults who plan our city will people like my grandmother, who remembers where the water has always gone. She be the best map we have.

Ban Nong Bua School Shelter · Information Board

Meals: Breakfast 7:00–8:00 · Lunch 12:00–13:00 · Dinner 18:00–19:00 (canteen)

Medical tent: Open 8:00–20:00. A nurse is on call at night; please ask at the information desk.

Drinking water: Free at the canteen. Please do not drink tap water until further notice.

Phone charging: Library, ground floor. Maximum one hour per phone, so that everyone has a turn.

Lost and found: Information desk.

Quiet hours: 22:00–6:00. Please keep voices low and turn off music.

Children’s corner: Room 5, 9:00–16:00. Volunteer teachers run games and reading activities. Children under six must be accompanied by an adult.

Learning to Live with Water

For centuries, communities in Thailand’s river valleys expected floods and built their lives around them. Houses stood on stilts, rice was planted to match the rising water, and the floodplain, the flat land beside a river, was left open so that water could spread out and slowly sink into the ground.

Modern cities have often forgotten these lessons. As cities grow, floodplains are filled in and covered with roads, car parks and housing estates. Concrete and asphalt do not absorb water, so rain runs off them quickly and collects in low areas. Drains designed decades ago are often too small for today’s heavier storms, which scientists link to a warming climate.

Some planners now argue for “sponge cities”: urban areas designed to absorb, store and slowly release rainwater. Ideas include parks that can safely flood, roofs covered with plants, and pavements that let water pass through. In Bangkok, a university park was designed with a gentle slope and underground tanks so that it can hold large amounts of rainwater during storms.

Critics point out that such projects are expensive and take years to build, while floods are an urgent problem. Supporters reply that the cost of doing nothing is higher: every major flood destroys homes, businesses and harvests worth far more than the investment needed.

Perhaps the most important change is a change in thinking. Instead of asking how to keep water out, cities may need to ask where water can safely go.

Volunteers Help Families Return as Mun River Falls

UBON RATCHATHANI. Two weeks after the Mun River burst its banks, families in Warin Chamrap began returning home on Monday, helped by hundreds of volunteers armed with mops, buckets and pressure hoses.

The river, which reached its highest level in five years, flooded more than 4,000 homes in the province. At its peak, nearly 9,000 people were living in temporary shelters.

“The water leaves, but the mud stays,” said Narong Saensuk, who coordinated the shelter at Ban Nong Bua School. “Cleaning one house can take a family a week. With twenty volunteers, it takes a day.”

Among the volunteers were students from local schools, monks from nearby temples and office workers who had travelled from Bangkok on their days off. Many had been helping at the shelters since the first night.

Officials have promised compensation of up to 5,000 baht per household, but residents say the money is not enough to replace damaged furniture and lost stock. Shop owners have been hit especially hard.

For some older residents, the flood has brought back memories. Eighty-one-year-old Bua Siriwong, who has lived beside the river all her life, says the water now goes to places it never used to. “When I was a girl, we knew where the river would go, so nobody built there,” she said. “Now they build everywhere, and then they are surprised.”