Tens of thousands race to escape Bangkok flood

THE INFAMOUS ‘Bangkok Hilton’ jail in Thailand’s capital city was evacuated in the face of rising flood waters yesterday, finally drawing international attention to a slow-motion disaster which has already left 373 dead and caused £6 billion in damage.

A month of relentless monsoon rains has put 26 of Thailand’s 77 provinces underwater but the worst is yet to come. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra made a national television broadcast last night warning that the combination of a new surge and high tides on Friday and Saturday means that the capital, low lying and with many of its 12 million population living in primitive conditions, stands no more than a 50-50 chance of avoiding inundation five feet deep.

Under fire for playing it too cool for too long, and for wearing £200 wellies on a visit to flooded slums, the country’s first woman PM declared a five-day “holiday” and told Bangkokers to get upstairs or, if they could, get out. It could be two weeks or two months, she warned, before the flood waters drain into the sea.

As the New York Times reports today, tens of thousands are now racing to escape “a city of rumours, panic buying and hastily built walls of sand bags and cement around shops and homes”.

Six hundred of the most serious criminals were marched out of the ‘Bangkok Hilton’, the Bang Kwang Central Prison, on the banks of the Chao Phraya river as the dykes began to burst. It is not known how many of the western drug runners who call the ‘Hilton’ home were among them, while Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the ‘Merchant of Death’, left his cell there a year ago, extradited to New York on charges including terrorism.

So far, Bangkok’s fabled red light district remains dry under foot. One reason why the floods, the worst in 50 years [see pictures], have drawn little attention has been a preoccupation with Gaddafi’s fate and Europe’s debt crisis, but another is that so far the beaches around Phuket, and thus the tourist industry, remain unaffected.

That might change. A humanitarian crisis looms as transport links are broken, food stocks dwindle, and the last of Bangkok’s supplies of bottled water fly off the supermarket shelves.

The Bangkok Post says the Chao Praya river will peak at 6pm local time on Saturday. The Foreign Office last night upgraded its travel warning for Bangkok and the 26 provinces to “essential” only. ·