Disasters and emergency response
Amid drought, diarrhea poses severe threat
Teachers at Toul Mead Primary School in Siem Reap province tell students to bring drinking water from home to keep them hydrated in the scorching heat. But water is increasingly hard to come by as the worst drought in decades drags on. There is no free ...
Livelihoods in jeopardy as Vietnam’s Mekong Delta struggles with sediment loss
The World Wide Fund for Nature reported that suspended sediment load in the Mekong Delta declined from 160 million tons in 1992 to 75 million tons in 2014 due to the construction of hydropower dams and reservoirs on the mainstream and branches of Mekong River. It noted that sand ...
Officials investigate fires in different regions
The cause of the fire, which spread from Ok mountain in Tambon Mae Nam to Phra mountain in Tambon Bor Phud of Surat Thani province, was suspected to be forest burning, which got out of control in the dry and hot weather. Up North, a Chiang ...
Digging deeper wells costs more
Amid a devastating drought, the need to dig more, and deeper, wells is threatening to overwhelm the government’s relief budget. The cost of wells rises exponentially with depth. And as groundwater continues to drop, itself exacerbated by the digging of more and more wells, deeper is ...
Across Thailand, a cruel drought takes terrible toll
In Pathum Thani’s Lam Luk Ka district, the Lam Luk Ka-Thanya Buri Road in Moo 8 of Tambon Lat Sawai has been damaged by subsidence, causing a 1.5-metre-deep and 100-metre-long section to collapse yesterday, prompting authorities to close the road as a safety precaution. In Chon ...
Fires burn large parts of Battambang forest
Fires have consumed more than 2,000 hectares of Prek Toal protected area in Cambodia’s Battambang province, killing some animals and destroying the breeding sites of multiple endangered species, Prek Toal project managers said on 5 May.Keep reading ...
Drought exacerbates hoof and mouth outbreak among cattle
A vaccine campaign has been launched in response to an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease exacerbated by drought conditions in Kampong Thom province, officials said yesterday, as drought-relief efforts continued in Banteay Meanchey.Chan Panhavoan, director of the veterinary office of the Kampong Thom provincial ...
Fire at Arakan state IDP camp leaves hundreds homeless
A fire near Arakan State’s Sittwe Township left hundreds of Rohingya Muslims homeless as it swept through dozens of shelters at the Baw Du Ba internally displaced person camp on 3 May, local sources said. “A total of 392 families stayed in the 49 longhouses. We ...
Mekong Delta loses half of silt to upstream dams: scientists
Scientists said the Mekong Delta is suffering from the cumulative impacts of saltwater intrusion, erosion and declining groundwater levels as a result of El Nino and the upstream dams. Tran Cong Lap is among many farmers who are well aware of the impacts said “Saltwater has been ...
Billions planned to stem water shortages
Mandalay Region government is to spend billions bringing drinking water to more than 100 villages that they fear could run dry over the next few weeks. U Myo, deputy director of the region’s Urban Development Department, said on 22 April that K172.45 billion provided by the ...
