The Perfect Storm

[Gaybutton]

Last Friday evening Pattaya experienced one of the heaviest rain storms I've seen here in many years. Several areas lost their electricity for hours. In some of the hardest hit areas I saw several trees that had been downed. For the first time in years, many parts of Sukhumvit Highway flash flooded. Naturally, that was when I had to drive right through it!

 

See if this comes as a major shock: Despite all the work that has been done to prevent such flooding, there were floods all over the city anyway.

 

The following appears in the PATTAYA CITY NEWS. There are some photos at http://www.pattayacitynews.net/news_06_07_50.htm

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Storm Chaos hits Pattaya

 

We are about to show you what 1 hour of heavy rainfall can do to the City of Pattaya. For those of you residing in “Fun City” you would have seen the heavy rainstorm that occurred at around 5pm on Thursday Evening. Despite modifications to draining systems around Pattaya, the cities infrastructure failed to cope with the rains and chaos ensued.

 

To add to the problems approximately 30% of Pattaya’s domestic electric supply was eliminated for approximately the same time leaving under-resourced electric company crews with the daunting task of restoring supplies.

 

As you can see from our pictures, the Sukumvit Road experienced flash flooding and due to the high winds extensive tree and structural damage was seen. We made out way to Pattaya Beach in front of Soi 9 where a new construction of a Central Plaza is underway. Metal fences came down causing damage to parked motorbikes and cars.

 

This was one of many similar incidents and demonstrates the dangers of such tropical rainstorms which are often experienced in this region of Asia at this time of year.

[Guest Steve1903]

The pics look fairly tame compared to the storms in parts of England recently.

In the Pattaya pics at least the cars are driving thru the water, in England the cars were under the water.

[Guest kenrfc]

On my last trip (early June) noticed that all the storm drain grates around Jomtien Complex were blocked with rocks, dirt and other debris. It looked like part of the road bed. Now as a landscaper by profession and with many years experience dealing with drainage the first thing I said to myself is "someone better clean these out before the rains begin or there'll be trouble".

 

For goodness sake people! You can have as many storm drains as you want but if the inlets are blocked THEY AIN'T A'GONNA WORK!

 

This is all a matter of maintence.

And if you have heavy downpours you almost have to have someone standing at the drains constantly cleaning off the debris that washes onto them or they'll block up fast.

 

Trust me on this. Been there, done that.

 

Gosh, its not as if Thailand is short of cheap labor.....