Monumental floods and destruction in Pattaya

[reader]

From Pattaya Mail

One lane of Jomtien beach road near Grand Jomtien Hotel collapsed, pulling palm trees down to the beach and caused traffic chaos.

Pattaya awakened on Wednesday morning to what looked like a scene out of a Hollywood disaster movie.

All throughout the night the tropical storm wielded its wrath, dumping non-stop heavy rain all over the country and Pattaya was not spared.

The rain did not stop at dawn but kept pouring down all morning and through most of the day.

Pattaya streets are known to flood even with the slightest of rainfall, but with such a forceful blitz of rain throughout the night, the worst was about to hit the unsuspecting citizens that day.

By late morning, the extent of the devastation became more visible as water rose to new heights in almost every part of town.

One of the hardest hit areas was Jomtien Beach Road at the intersection near Grand Jomtien Hotel. The beach road collapsed and slid 5 meters onto the beach. Palm trees and traffic light posts were sucked down to the beach too.

Police had to close off that section of road and direct traffic through little sois so people could travel to and from Pattaya.

Continues with many photos

https://www.pattayamail.com/news/monumental-floods-and-destruction-in-pattaya-wednesday-morning-371093

[Lonnie]

2 hours ago, reader said:

extent of the devastation

So awful!

[vinapu]

thank God no loss of life is reported  and good news to all those roadside fishermen catching awesome fish specimens as shown in quoted article and also on YouTube clip somebody posted yesterday

 

 

[Boy69]

 

[Guest]

One of those videos that's quite interesting at twice speed.

When it comes to drainage and other public works in Pattaya, I think the motto is "If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing as badly as possible so it can be repeated and more money in bribes can be skimmed off"

All those little drains come down to the beach, then there's a modest little concrete drain that's supposed to carry the water along the road so it can exit to the sea further along.     Except when the little drain running parallel to the beach is too small, it all bursts and washes away the sand at regular intervals.

In the case of the main Pattaya beach, they were installing this drain along the beach road over the winter of 2019-20.  

Build undersized & shoddy drain, wait for it to fail.  

Rinse and repeat.   Skim off more money each time.

 

I'd imagine most of the problems could be avoided if there was some proper design, engineering and construction, instead of persistent shoddiness.

[Travellerdave]

Over 20 years of visiting Pattaya I have experienced the floods but the ones this year seem to be more severe than previously. Whether this is to do with global warming and climate change I would not like to say. I suppose nature is trying to reclaim the land and turn it back to a flat swampy terrain covered with trees and scrub which you see in areas which have not been developed or farmed. 80 years ago the small fishing village of Pattaya consisted of  wooden houses built on the slightly higher land near Walking Street and raised above flood levels with piles. Man has concreted over the natural terrain which used to allow the rain water to soak away gradually. All this has happened also in more developed countries but there it’s emiellorated by a higher standard of infrastructure not like that present inadequate engineering in Pattaya for the described by z909. Thais are capable of erecting impressive structures but they are spoiled by greed, lack of planning and general bribery and corruption. 

 

[macaroni21]

From the video, it looks to me that the entire beach-front road and the pedestrian footpath, parts of which have been washed away, were literally built on sand. No, "built" is too grand a word here. "Laid on sand" would be more accurate. I don't see any sturdy piles reaching down to bedrock. Hardly any wonder that even without major storms the road and walkway deteriorate rapidly, cracking and subsiding, as we have seen in years past.

Seeing how much depth of sand there is under the road, it could well be that the orginal beach reached a further 30 - 50 metres inland, which suggests that the first row of houses have also been built on loose sand or soil, though some may have deep piles.

But this is a legacy problem. If the orginal building owners built right up to the sandy beach, or even encroached onto the sand, then when the municipal government desires to put in a road, or widen the road in front of these houses, the road must necessarily be on sand too. 

The proper solution when planning to improve road access and public amenities would have been to exercise eminent domain (compulsory acquisition) with the authorities acquiring the first 30 - 50 metres of land for this purpose. That way, the investment to be put in to road and facilities construction would be on more solid ground. Of course I know compulsory purchase would come up against any number of powerful stakeholders with political connections. It may be too much to hope for.

As for drainage, the video's subtitle at about 55 seconds says that "every 20 - 30 yards, there is a ditch". At 2:05, we see why. There is a fairly large diameter drainage pipe that goes no further forward than the edge of the bitumen. It was delivering storm water into the sand base about 1 metre below the beach surface. Perhaps there is a similar pipe running from the sois, perpendicular to the water line, every 20 - 30 metres. This is crazy; naturally, the flow of water from the pipe (which stops short) would undermine the stability of the sand beach. 

Even worse, in normal times, the pipe(s) would be delilvering untreated brown water from drains into the under-layers of the beach, dirty stuff which would naturally leach into the sea. Or, I shudder to think, perhaps even sewage. 

If they really wanted to protect the beach and keep it clean, then there should have been a deep (but covered) storm drain, almost a mini-canal, running parallel to the beach, e.g. on the seaward edge of the bitumen road. The capacity of the mini-canal should be sufficient to collect all the brown water from the drains, even on very wet days, taking said water to a treatment facility a few kilometres away. Water from the urban areas should not be allowed to flow into the sand or into the sea in front of the beach.

But, TIT, I suppose!

[vinapu]

3 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

 

If they really wanted to protect the beach and keep it clean

WHAT ??? !!!

Of course nobody does, it's enough to walk along in the morning and see how much rubbish is in the sand and nobody is doing anything about that

[Guest]

Here they are making a shoddy repair on the undersized pipe running along Jomtien beach road.    As Macaroni21 says, it should be like a mini canal.  

Instead, it's designed to fail.

 

[reader]

If there's any upside, the outlook bodes well for continued strong job prospects for constructions workers.

[macaroni21]

That's an informative photo, z909!

As pointed out, the pipe may be undersized if, as I reckon, it serves a biggish catchment area of several sois and several hundred metres. Torrential tropical downpours should not be underestimated especially in thise times of global warming. Secondly, I doubt if planners have considered how much silt and trash also gets into drains and how these reduce the capacity of pipes like this one.

Even more worrying is the poor construction standard, shockingly visible in the pictuer itself. Firstly, the pipe is made by joining innumerable sections each of 0.8 or 1.0 metres. Every joint is a weak link, particularly if workmanship quality is not closely monitored. Once a crack occurs, water rushes out of the pipe into the loose soil, washing it away, and creating "vacuum" spaces in the ground. Other countries now use long sections of steel pipe for such sewerage pojects, where a steel section is perhaps 15m long, and sections are welded together to a high standard. Steel also has the advantage of tensile strength, meaning it can bend and flex slightly (though imperceptible to the human eye) and therefore is a better material for horizontal structures. (Concrete has good compression strength and thus has advantage in taking vertical loads --- but not if it has so many joints.)

Secondly, look closely at the picture and you see vrtually no support beneath the pipe. Loose, shiftable sand/soil below the pipe means that, with its numerous weak joints, it will cannot resist the soil forces around it. Imagine when the job is done and the area paved over and one day a tractor decides to drive over the walkway above it. Imagine the load the tractor will put on the pavement, which is then transfered to the soil/sand below it, which is then transfered onto the pipe sitting within the soil/sand, sans foundation!

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, macaroni21 said:

. Imagine the load the tractor will put on the pavement, which is then transfered to the soil/sand below it, which is then transfered onto the pipe sitting within the soil/sand, sans foundation!

It's why reader is so optimistic about  the outlook boding well for continued strong job prospects for constructions workers.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

As pointed out, the pipe may be undersized if, as I reckon, it serves a biggish catchment area of several sois and several hundred metres.

I'm fairly sure it does serve many sois.    This pipe runs along beach road, so it's collecting the water from several sois.   You have to go a very long way to find an outlet, so it has to be serving many sois.

Pattaya beach has the same kind of system, recently renewed to similar low standards.   So we see water coming up OUT of the drains during the floods, which is a sure sign that they are over capacity.

[vinapu]

3 hours ago, z909 said:

So we see water coming up OUT of the drains during the floods, which is a sure sign that they are over capacity.

I and I'm sure many of us would be happy to have an opportunity see that with our very own eyes instead of  just YouTube option but day of shine will come  

[macaroni21]

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

I and I'm sure many of us would be happy to have an opportunity see that with our very own eyes instead of  just YouTube option but day of shine will come  

Yes. Would be happy to have the opportunity. If getting drenched in a downpour and wading through floods is the price to pay to visit soon, It's more than affordable.

By the way, I've waded before. Some years ago, just as the taxi from Suvarnabhumi was turning into the Bangkok soi where my hotel was located, driver said, "Cannot go. Many water." So I had to get out of the cab into almost knee-deep brown water, holding my biggish bag over my head like some African villager and wade some 150 - 200 metres to my hotel. Along the way, I met a drowned rat and what might have been a little snake sturggling too to get out of the water. It might been just a piece of thick string, but I was not about to pick it up for closer examination. 

I'd do that again. Dead rat and slithering snake/string notwithstanding, for a chance to be back.

[vinapu]

It happened to me twice to get a caught by such downpour  turning stets  to lakes  but no complains from me. Once I was visiting Super a with ChristianPFC when it started so we had nice company to wait it over. Another time I was with boy I took from Pattaya to Bangkok and we got stuck in carport with 7/11 on the corner. What surprised me on both occasions it was how fast streets went back to normal.

And lets be honest getting soaked in +30 is still much more bearable then the same in +3    

[Guest]

7 hours ago, vinapu said:

 What surprised me on both occasions it was how fast streets went back to normal.

And lets be honest getting soaked in +30 is still much more bearable then the same in +3    

A short flood on the streets when it's 30C isn't a big problem.

However, what we have seen in Pattaya is flooding of a large number of premises in central Pattaya, sand washed away from the beach and some damage to the roads. All of that takes longer to fix.  

When there is fairly regular flooding that causes damage like this, particularly to the premises, that is a problem.