Chiefs of Bangkok districts facing the Chao Phraya River have sandbags installed along sections of their riverbanks that have not been protected with permanent embankments to cope with possible flooding due to high tides and water from the North.
Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt said he told district chiefs concerned to use sandbags to fill gaps on 23 sections of the riverbanks that had not been protected with permanent embankments yet. The unprotected sections included piers and the private land plots where owners did not allow the City Hall to build a permanent embankment, he said.
Existing permanent embankments stretch on a combined distance of 88 kilometers. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration supervises 80 kilometers of them and the private sector eight kilometers.
The governor said that officials would have to monitor the flow of the Chao Phraya River because if it exceeded 2,000 cubic meters per second, the level of the river would reach the top of the embankments and could then overflow.
The Royal Irrigation Department predicted that the level of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok would rise mid next month. (TNA)