Floods and heavy rains in Thailand have killed at least 31 people and caused serious damage in nearly 50 provinces, according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of the Interior Ministry.
Of the confirmed deaths, 12 occurred in the capital, Bangkok, and its metropolitan area. The other 19 fatalities occurred in six provinces spread across the central and eastern regions of the country, the agency said in its latest report. Altogether, the storms have caused severe damage in nearly 50 provinces.
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More than 1.17 million homes have been flooded since the rains began on September 16. Although water has begun to retreat from most of Bangkok’s main roads, difficult conditions persist in several sectors of the capital and in 26 other provinces, concentrated primarily in central Thailand. The emergency has yet to end in those areas.
Municipal authorities are carrying out intensive drainage work in the eastern areas of the city to prevent new emergencies, as heavy rain is forecast toward the end of this week.
Floods across Thailand have killed 31 people and affected about 4.14 million others since Sept. 16, authorities said on Monday. #XinhuaNews pic.twitter.com/rBlYvtsOCJ
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) October 5, 2026
Bangkok Under Water
At the most critical point of the storms, Bangkok received 300 millimeters of rain in 48 hours. That is roughly 30 million cubic meters of water, about the same as the city’s average rainfall for the entire month of September.
The capital’s exposure to this kind of disaster is rooted in its geography. The city sits in the Chao Phraya River delta at only 1.5 meters above sea level, and it has been sinking gradually for years because of the historic over-extraction of its underground aquifers. The gradual sinking makes the metropolis more prone to flooding than its elevation alone would suggest. Together, these factors make it difficult for the city to drain large volumes of water in a short time.
5 ต.ค. 69 เวลา 13.30 น. กทม.–นนทบุรี–ปทุมธานี มีฝนปานกลางถึงหนัก กลุ่มฝนขยายตัวเพิ่ม เคลื่อนช้า ๆ ไปโซนนนทบุรี–ปทุมธานีฝั่งตะวันตก#กรมอุตุนิยมวิทยา #พยากรณ์อากาศ #ดิจิทัลเพื่อเศรษฐกิจและสังคม pic.twitter.com/YmzRfNAF7Q
— กรมอุตุนิยมวิทยา (@tmdthai2) October 5, 2026
Emergency Aid Cleared
Faced with the magnitude of the disaster, Thailand’s government approved emergency funding of $122 million, the equivalent of 4.1 billion baht. The authorities cleared the allocation recently, after assessing the extent of the damage nationwide.
Government spokesman Ekkapob Pianpises said the Interior Ministry will administer those resources. The money is intended to compensate people affected by the flooding across the whole country, from the capital to the provinces still under water.
The current emergency revives the memory of the devastating floods of 2011. That event killed more than 800 people and left 13 million affected throughout the Southeast Asian nation, a scale far greater than the present toll, and a reminder of how quickly such crises can escalate.
From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.