Hat Yai was expecting its usual floods. What hit was a one-in-300-year monster

Singapore/Hat Yai: The family had faced flood disasters before. In some major accidents in 2000 and 2010, water leaked into their homes.

So when warnings appeared on social media that the southern Thai city of Hat Yai would be flooded again, Krongkarn Jantarasavad and his family braced for what they expected would be little more than another costly irritant.

Instead, officials said, the city was struck by a once-in-300-year disaster.

“We never thought this would happen,” Krongkarn, 42, said from the street where he was flooded throughout the week.

“Now we need to get my father to the hospital before he dies.”

As of Saturday afternoon, the worst flooding in Krongkarn’s (and even others’ memory) killed at least 145 people and affected another 3 million in Thailand’s southern provinces, according to local media.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who declared a state of emergency in Songkhla province of Hat Yai, spoke of the “unprecedented severity” of the damage.

Emergency crews were rescuing people from building roofs and flooded interiors. Tens of thousands of people fled to official or temporary shelters such as hardware stores.

Supermarkets ran out of food and hotels that remained open quickly sold out of reservations. Power and connection were cut off.

The flood is just one of a series of disasters occurring simultaneously across the vast lands of Southeast Asia.

A rare tropical cyclone that formed over the Straits of Malacca slammed into the Indonesian province of Aceh on November 25 and hung there for a while before doubling as a rainstorm over Malaysia.

According to the BBC, more than 440 people died in floods and landslides on the large island of Sumatra. Days earlier, at least 30 people were killed on Indonesia’s central island of Java when a different torrential rain system hit the region.

It is estimated that this year’s storms in Vietnam caused at least $4.6 billion in damage. More than 90 people lost their lives in the flood disaster in the central regions last week. Most of this rain came from Typhoon Kalmaegi, which killed more than 200 people in the Philippines.

More than 630 millimeters of rain has fallen in Hat Yai, the tourism and commercial center of Southern Thailand, in three days since November 19.

By Nov. 22, swollen water had reached the second floor of Krongkarn’s suburban home, trapping his elderly parents, sister, brother-in-law and nieces and nephews, both toddlers, inside.

This imprint found Krongkarn shortly after he returned to Hat Yai from the neighboring district where he worked and his ailing father, Damrong Chantarawasat, 76.

“My father is a bedridden patient and he was supposed to undergo kidney dialysis last Saturday, but he could not leave the house,” he said.

“His condition is so bad today, he can’t wait any longer. My sister called me to ask for his immediate release.

“The Hat Yai hospital we were supposed to go to was also flooded. They told us their patient had to be evacuated and I had to take him to Rattaphum hospital.

“We checked and found out that the road leading to Rattaphum was also flooded.”

Luckily a rescue boat managed to retrieve Damrong. The last update from Krongkarn was that he remained hospitalized in critical condition.

The northeast monsoon season, typically from November to February, corresponds to the rainy months in the southern part of Southeast Asia.

According to the Singapore-based ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Center, the heavy rain in Hat Yai may also have been affected by La Nina, with the Indian Ocean dipole being negative.

But this phenomenon is not unusual. They last overlapped in 2022.

“Seasonal variability also plays a significant role in influencing the region’s actual rainfall patterns,” a spokesman for the centre, said.

Meteorologists have suggested that extreme weather conditions in Southeast Asia may be caused by the interaction of Typhoon Koto in the Philippines and Cyclone Senyar in the Strait of Malacca.

Then of course there is climate change.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the average temperature in Asia in 2024 was approximately 1.04 degrees above the 1991-2020 average; this was either the warmest or second-warmest year on record, depending on the data set.

The changes make weather forecasting even harder to predict.

Flood mitigation efforts in Southeast Asia, a region likely to be exposed to future sea level rises, have not always kept pace with the growing threat of sudden, unpredictable and extreme weather conditions.

“While Southeast Asia is experiencing a clear warming trend due to climate change, such trends in precipitation in the region are more difficult to detect as they are highly variable,” said a spokesperson for the ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Centre.

The center’s projections show that, with the influence of climate change, the wettest and hottest day records will occur in Southeast Asia as the century progresses.

As this month has shown, the region is also particularly vulnerable to typhoons: Scientists believe that global warming may increase the intensity of typhoons, but not necessarily their frequency.

As the water recedes in Hat Yai, revealing muddy cars and muddy shops, climate change is on people’s lips.

“Normally we have three seasons: hot, rain and cold. But our seasons have changed. They are not fixed,” said Teerapat Kutchamath, director general of Thailand’s Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Agency.

“This may be due to climate change affecting the world.”

Teerapat had just returned from a helicopter ride over Hat Yai to survey the damage and help distribute water, instant noodles and milk to tens of thousands of people left homeless by the flooding.

“In the past two years, there has been drought in Thailand. Farmers were affected, there was not enough water for their crops. Now there is rain and floods,” he said.

“Thailand faces more storms like this.”

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