Updates on the +4 months of flooding in Thailand and the earthquake in Turkey
Turkey ends search for survivors, toll nears 600
Source - Reuters
By Ibon Villabeitia and Evrim Ergin
ERCIS, Turkey | Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:33am EDT
(Reuters) - The death toll from last week's earthquake in southeast Turkey rose to 596 Sunday, the day after authorities stopped searching for survivors and focused on helping thousands of homeless families in crisis.
In Ercis, the town hit hardest by the 7.2 magnitude quake that devastated Van province on October 23, some shops reopened on Sunday, electricity was switched back on in parts of town and one bank's ATM started working.
But with barely any of Ercis's nearly 100,000 residents ready to return to their damaged homes with strong aftershocks still rattling the area, life is anything but normal. One aftershock Sunday morning registered at magnitude 5.3.
Winter is fast approaching, temperatures plunge at night, and young and old in particular are falling sick in tent encampments set up by relief agencies on the outskirts of town.
The government's disaster management website said more than 43,000 tents had been handed out in Van. Officials say that is more than needed because people whose homes are not so badly damaged are demanding tents as they feel safer under canvas.
"Our house is in good shape but we live in a tent due to fear. We will go back once the aftershocks are gone and the government says our house is safe," said Fadli Kocak, owner of a bakery in Ercis, who hopes to be back in business in a week.
Many people were queuing to register for tents Sunday, a first step to having an inspection done of their home, as authorities say they will hand them out only after verifying that a building is too risky to live in.
"The problem here is that you can't give 100,000 tents in a town whose population is equal to that," Yalcin Mumcu, who coordinated search and rescue operations in Ercis, told Reuters.
"Our people need to the trust the government, too. Everybody is asking for tents. They need to be patient, if the Prime Minister says they are going to build a new, better Van, I am sure they will," he said.
The relief operation is politically sensitive as the southeast is where most of Turkey's Kurdish minority lives, and the army has been fighting a separatist insurgency there that has cost more than 40,000 lives since it first erupted in 1984.
After criticism in the first days of the disaster, state authorities cranked up relief operations, asking for foreign help providing tents, containers and prefabricated houses.
Hoardes of people in provincial capital Van have also clamored for tents even though far fewer buildings collapsed there. Villagers in surrounding hills are seen as more in need because most of their primitively built houses were destroyed and they would be caught in the open if there is early snow.
"Most of us sleep outside. The village has received coal and blankets but no tents," said Mehmet Siddik Demirtas, headman at Yukari Isikli village, about 10 km (6 miles) from Ercis.
"We go every day to the city of Ercis to ask for tents but they tell us to wait," he said.
Turkey's post-quake relief races against winter
Source - Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia and Evrim Ergin
ERCIS, Turkey | Sat Oct 29, 2011 2:30pm EDT
(Reuters) - A week after a powerful earthquake in southeast Turkey, survivors roamed the streets past devastated homes, some complaining their families still had no tents with winter closing in.
Saturday, the official death toll crept up to 582. The town of Ercis was worst hit by the 7.2 magnitude quake, with 455 people killed. The last person dug out of the rubble alive was a 13-year-old boy in the early hours of Friday. He was the 188th person to be rescued. Hopes of finding more were fading.
Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told a news conference in Van Saturday that search and rescue operations at the last four sites in Ercis would be halted in the evening.
Under fire for a slow response in the early days of the disaster, state authorities have said tents will only be given to families once their home has been deemed uninhabitable, but people are too scared to go back to their cracked walls with multiple aftershocks rattling the region.
"I have a 1-month-old baby and two other children. We are on the street. My baby is going to get sick. My wife needs looking after, she just gave birth. We've got no tents, nowhere to stay," Naci Aydin, a 32-year-old unemployed man told Reuters as he registered at a municipal crisis center in Van.
"We just want a tent, all these people need somewhere to stay, but we don't get it, we don't receive any aid. I will register here today but I've got no hope."
An official at the center said volunteers will visit the addresses of people who register to decide how much aid they needed.
Overseeing the relief efforts, Atalay said 35,000 tents had been handed out so far, and there was no shortage. But people have complained distribution was chaotic, tents were looted, and some were sold by profiteers on the black market.
"From now on, we are determining the need for tents according to our nightly visits and not according to citizens demands," Atalay said.
Relief agencies have established tent cities on the edge of a town that was once home to nearly 100,000.
Atalay earlier said the emergency needs for all the affected -- at least in the main urban areas -- would be met by Saturday night, though supplying outlying villages would take longer.
For people still waiting for the state to help they seemed empty words, after spending a sixth bitterly cold night under whatever shelter they had made for themselves, and accusations of mismanagement and unfairness of handing out tents were rife.
"They give tents to supporters of the government party. Village leaders hand out tents to their friends and relatives. Public servants get the best tents," 60-year-old Kahraman Kaya told Reuters, tramping the streets of Ercis with other grim-faced, red-eyed and unshaven men.
The region is predominantly Kurdish, and the government is trying to build bridges with the ethnic minority while fighting a long-running separatist insurgency by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, making it particularly sensitive to any accusations of neglect.
Parades and receptions Saturday for Republic Day, celebrating the formation of the modern Turkish state, were canceled.
Saturday, a female suicide bomber killed at least two people and wounded a dozen more in an attack on a tea house close to the offices of the ruling AK Party in Bingol, another town in the mainly Kurdish area.
FREEZING TEMPERATURES
No official figures were available for the number of people made homeless by the quake. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies put the number of "affected people" at 50,000.
In Van, a city of 1 million people which suffered less damage, tests were being conducted to ascertain whether the water was drinkable.
Lights were switched back on in some buildings in the center of Ercis Friday and a pharmacy, a bank and a computer parts shop re-opened, but there was no running water.
Electricity cables were run to the camps so people could plug in whatever appliance they had salvaged next to the tents.
Food distribution centers are giving out water, nappies, bread, hot soup and pasta in plastic trays, but survivors say their main problem is long-term shelter from the cold.
Nezihe Saglam, 38, fretted for her children as she sat around a small camp fire with other family members who had pitched three tents in a garden.
"We have a stove in the tent but it's freezing at night, and the stoves can't help the freezing temperatures. What if the kids get infections?" she said.
Niyazi Dogac Gucbilek, a health official drafted in to run a mobile hospital near a camp in Ercis of more than 330 tents, said the main task was countering acute respiratory illnesses and blood pressure problems, as winter fast approaches.
"Cold is the biggest problem now. We had many diarrhoea cases In the first few days but now it is down to normal levels," he told Reuters. He said 10 babies had been born there in the past five days, all perfectly healthy.
The United States said Friday it would join other countries answering Turkey's call for help to supply tents, containers and prefabricated housing.
Thai flood frustration grows
Source - Reuters
By Robert Birsel
BANGKOK | Tue Nov 1, 2011 9:34am EDT
(Reuters) - Thai authorities tried to stem growing anger among flood victims on Tuesday as water swamped new neighborhoods and the government began mapping out a plan costing billions of dollars to prevent a repeat disaster and secure investor confidence.
The floods began in July and have devastated large parts of the central Chao Phraya river basin, killed nearly 400 people and disrupted the lives of more than two million.
Inner Bangkok, protected by a network of dikes and sandbag walls, survived peak tides on the weekend and remains mostly dry.
But large volumes of water are sliding across the land to the north, east and west of the city, trying to reach the sea and being diverted by the city centre's defenses into new suburbs as they recede in others.
In the northeastern city neighborhood of Sam Wa, angry residents demanded the opening of a sluice gate to let water out of their community. Residents jostled with police on Monday and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered that the gate be opened by a meter (three feet).
But city authorities warned that the flow through the gate could move via a major canal into large parts of the city which are now dry.
"We are opposed to it but the government has ordered the BMA to open the gate, so more water will come," said Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) spokesman Jate Sopitpongstorn.
"It could reach the Bang Chan industrial estate. We have to see the consequences," he told Reuters, adding that residents of the area had been told to be on alert.
Yingluck's government and the Bangkok authority represent opposing factions in Thailand's strife-plagued politics.
An expert from the government flood management team played down the danger to inner Bangkok of opening the sluice gate, saying the flow was relatively small compared with the amount coming in through leaks in the city's dikes.
"Inner Bangkok is not so much an issue," said academic Anon Sanitiwong Na Ayutthaya. "At least we know what to do, it's just a matter of time to fix the leaks."
The disaster has been the first big test for the government of Yingluck, the younger sister of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.
Yingluck, a political novice, took over this year after an election that many Thais hoped would heal divisions that triggered street violence last year.
Saving central Bangkok from a ruinous flood would be an important victory. The city's 12 million people account for 41 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product.
But prolonged misery in outlying areas and heavily flooded provinces to the north would take the gloss off any victory for Yingluck, especially given a perception that those areas have been sacrificed to save the capital.
To the north of Bangkok, Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya provinces have been largely inundated for weeks, along with seven industrial estates that have sprung up over the last two decades on what used to be the central plain's rice fields.
"BE PREPARED"
People eked out a living in the flooded provinces on Tuesday with women cooking over gas stoves in the shade of plastic sheets strung up over pick-up trucks while men in their underwear cast fishing nets into water covering roads.
Cars, trucks and taxis were bumper to bumper for about 20 km (12 miles) on an elevated road out of Bangkok, parked and abandoned safely above the murky tide.
The cabinet met to work out a recovery plan that one cabinet minister said this week could cost up to $30 billion, including an overhaul of the water-management system and rehabilitation of industrial estates.
Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Kittirat Na Ranong said the government would need to borrow "hundreds of billions of baht" to recover and prevent a repeat of disaster during the annual rainy season.
"Any investor, ambassador, I talk to, they never ask how high the floodwaters are but what will Thailand actually do to prevent this from happening again," Kittirat told reporters.
The government would invite experts from inside and outside the country to help draw up the plan and he would approach the Asian Development Bank to discuss financing.
"We have to be prepared for the future," Kittirat said. "Preparation and the prevention of floods and drought is something we must start to do now."
Yingluck said on Monday she had assured Japanese investors there would be no repeat of the disaster. The government expects it will take three months to get the flooded industrial estates back on their feet.
Thailand is the second-largest exporter of computer hard drives and global prices are rising because of a flood-related shortage of major components used in personal computers.
Thailand is also Southeast Asia's main auto-parts maker and Japan's Honda Motor Co said car production could be difficult in the second half of its business year ending in March. Its Ayutthaya plant has suspended work indefinitely.
The Bank of Thailand has nearly halved its projection of economic growth this year to 2.6 percent from July's 4.1 percent estimate, and said the economy -- Southeast Asia's second largest -- would shrink by 1.9 percent in the December quarter from the previous three months due to the floods.
Headline inflation rose to 4.19 percent in October from 4.03 percent the previous month as the flooding pushed up some prices but the central bank said the rises were temporary and it would focus on longer-term factors in setting policy.
The floods submerged four million acres (1.6 million ha), an area roughly the size of Kuwait, and destroyed 25 percent of the main rice crop in the world's largest rice exporter.
The deluge was caused in part by unusually heavy monsoon rain but the weather has been mostly clear for the past week. The BMA said 2,245 mm (more than seven feet) of rain had fallen this year to the end of October, 40.8 percent above average. ($1=30.75 baht)
Thai floods batter global electronics, auto supply chains
Source - Reuters
By Ploy Ten Kate and Chang-Ran Kim
BANGKOK/TOKYO | Fri Oct 28, 2011 12:06pm EDT
(Reuters) - Manufacturers of car parts to computer hard drives are worst hit in Thailand and face a bleak key holiday selling season due to massive floods, which have shut down production.
Japanese car makers that had just started to recover from the March earthquake and tsunami that disrupted their supply chains are now facing shortages of key parts made in Thailand, a key manufacturing base in Southeast Asia.
Companies including Toyota Motor Co and Honda Motor Co have already curtailed production at plants as far away as North America because their Thai suppliers are under water.
Computer makers such as Lenovo Group Ltd, the world's No.2 PC maker, have also been affected. Lenovo said earlier this week it expected some constraints on hard disk drive supplies through the first quarter of next year due to the floods.
Samsung Electronics, the world's top computer memory chip maker, said on Friday that it expected Thailand's floods to dampen sales of personal computers and prices of DRAM chips used in PCs.
"We expect PC (sales) to be lower than expected. As a result, we expect weakness in DRAM prices," an executive at Samsung told an earnings conference call.
Taiwan's Acer Inc said it has already started to raise prices on future orders to cope with rising costs.
Thailand is the No. 2 maker of hard disk drives (HDD) after China and makes about half of global output taking place there, meaning damage caused by flooding could keep factories closed or hobbled for months, analysts and executives said.
Thailand has become a major manufacturing center due to government incentives, tax breaks and land acquisition deals specifically designed to lure automotive companies and high-tech manufacturers.
Complicating the situation are the tight links global companies have forged in their supply chains to minimize holding expensive inventories and which utilize "just in time" manufacturing. As seen during the March earthquake in Japan, when one link is broken, it can disrupt production on a global scale.
Flooding has forced the closure of seven industrial estates in Ayutthaya, Nonthaburi and Pathum Thani provinces bordering Bangkok, causing billions of dollars of damage and putting about 650,000 people temporarily out of work.
"Inventory in the supply chain should be able to satisfy demand until late November to early December, but if the situation does not improve, many products will not be able to be produced because hard disk production is very concentrated in Thailand and the plants in China and Malaysia are not enough to support industry demand," said Charles Lin, chief financial officer of Pegatron Corp.
The company is the main contract manufacturer for Asustek Computer Inc.
Top hard drive makers Western Digital and Seagate both have factories in Thailand. Western Digital's factories are closed and Seagate has warned it could face parts shortages even though its plants are running.
Computer makers may be affected longer than other manufacturers because their manufacturing plants require "clean room" environments to fabricate precision computer components.
Asustek's Chief Financial Officer, David Chang, said the floods were already pushing up prices for hard drives by as much as 20-40 percent.
"If the situation persists, not only notebook production will be affected, but shipments for desktops and other components will also drop," he said.
"Our inventory can last us until the end of November and our Q4 guidance to be given out next Monday will be more conservative to reflect the impact."
Industry officials said it may take as long as 45 days after the waters recede to be up and running. Car makers could however, be as affected if the supply shortages include electronic components.
A spokeswoman for Quanta Computer, the world's top contract PC maker and whose clients include Hewlett Packard Co, said its clients have not been affected much "so far."
"Usually under tight inventory environment, first-tier companies enjoy priority to get the materials because they have stronger bargaining power," said Carol Hsu.
CARS AND SANDBAGS
Toyota Motor officials in Thailand said the company had shifted ready-made parts used to produce pick-up trucks and modified pick-up trucks to its Gateway City facility in Thailand's Chachoengsao province.
The facility there is 44 meters above sea level, said Vudhigorn Suriyachantananont, senior vice president of Toyota Motor Thailand.
Wall of sandbags are protecting the plant and "tools and machinery are sealed and stored in high places," he said.
Daihatsu Motor Co said on Friday it would reduce work to produce Toyota-badged cars at two Japanese factories next week due to a shortage of parts from Thailand.
Daihatsu, the minivehicle unit of Toyota, said it expects no impact from the Thai floods on its own minicar production in Japan and in Indonesia and Malaysia at least for November.
The Japanese government announced on Friday it would allow Japanese companies operating in Thailand to bring some Thai workers to Japan to make up for lost production.
Japan's trade ministry said the Thai workers would only be allowed in for six months and would not be allowed to bring their families.
BBC Video - Delivering aid to flood-hit Thai communities
BBC Video - Thai floods trap baby elephants
Donation Links:
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders
International Medical Corps
UNICEF's Emergency Relief Programs
Global Giving
Global Impact
World Vision Disaster Relief Fund
(These are all BBB accredited charities.)
Source - Reuters
By Ibon Villabeitia and Evrim Ergin
ERCIS, Turkey | Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:33am EDT
(Reuters) - The death toll from last week's earthquake in southeast Turkey rose to 596 Sunday, the day after authorities stopped searching for survivors and focused on helping thousands of homeless families in crisis.
In Ercis, the town hit hardest by the 7.2 magnitude quake that devastated Van province on October 23, some shops reopened on Sunday, electricity was switched back on in parts of town and one bank's ATM started working.
But with barely any of Ercis's nearly 100,000 residents ready to return to their damaged homes with strong aftershocks still rattling the area, life is anything but normal. One aftershock Sunday morning registered at magnitude 5.3.
Winter is fast approaching, temperatures plunge at night, and young and old in particular are falling sick in tent encampments set up by relief agencies on the outskirts of town.
The government's disaster management website said more than 43,000 tents had been handed out in Van. Officials say that is more than needed because people whose homes are not so badly damaged are demanding tents as they feel safer under canvas.
"Our house is in good shape but we live in a tent due to fear. We will go back once the aftershocks are gone and the government says our house is safe," said Fadli Kocak, owner of a bakery in Ercis, who hopes to be back in business in a week.
Many people were queuing to register for tents Sunday, a first step to having an inspection done of their home, as authorities say they will hand them out only after verifying that a building is too risky to live in.
"The problem here is that you can't give 100,000 tents in a town whose population is equal to that," Yalcin Mumcu, who coordinated search and rescue operations in Ercis, told Reuters.
"Our people need to the trust the government, too. Everybody is asking for tents. They need to be patient, if the Prime Minister says they are going to build a new, better Van, I am sure they will," he said.
The relief operation is politically sensitive as the southeast is where most of Turkey's Kurdish minority lives, and the army has been fighting a separatist insurgency there that has cost more than 40,000 lives since it first erupted in 1984.
After criticism in the first days of the disaster, state authorities cranked up relief operations, asking for foreign help providing tents, containers and prefabricated houses.
Hoardes of people in provincial capital Van have also clamored for tents even though far fewer buildings collapsed there. Villagers in surrounding hills are seen as more in need because most of their primitively built houses were destroyed and they would be caught in the open if there is early snow.
"Most of us sleep outside. The village has received coal and blankets but no tents," said Mehmet Siddik Demirtas, headman at Yukari Isikli village, about 10 km (6 miles) from Ercis.
"We go every day to the city of Ercis to ask for tents but they tell us to wait," he said.
Turkey's post-quake relief races against winter
Source - Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia and Evrim Ergin
ERCIS, Turkey | Sat Oct 29, 2011 2:30pm EDT
(Reuters) - A week after a powerful earthquake in southeast Turkey, survivors roamed the streets past devastated homes, some complaining their families still had no tents with winter closing in.
Saturday, the official death toll crept up to 582. The town of Ercis was worst hit by the 7.2 magnitude quake, with 455 people killed. The last person dug out of the rubble alive was a 13-year-old boy in the early hours of Friday. He was the 188th person to be rescued. Hopes of finding more were fading.
Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told a news conference in Van Saturday that search and rescue operations at the last four sites in Ercis would be halted in the evening.
Under fire for a slow response in the early days of the disaster, state authorities have said tents will only be given to families once their home has been deemed uninhabitable, but people are too scared to go back to their cracked walls with multiple aftershocks rattling the region.
"I have a 1-month-old baby and two other children. We are on the street. My baby is going to get sick. My wife needs looking after, she just gave birth. We've got no tents, nowhere to stay," Naci Aydin, a 32-year-old unemployed man told Reuters as he registered at a municipal crisis center in Van.
"We just want a tent, all these people need somewhere to stay, but we don't get it, we don't receive any aid. I will register here today but I've got no hope."
An official at the center said volunteers will visit the addresses of people who register to decide how much aid they needed.
Overseeing the relief efforts, Atalay said 35,000 tents had been handed out so far, and there was no shortage. But people have complained distribution was chaotic, tents were looted, and some were sold by profiteers on the black market.
"From now on, we are determining the need for tents according to our nightly visits and not according to citizens demands," Atalay said.
Relief agencies have established tent cities on the edge of a town that was once home to nearly 100,000.
Atalay earlier said the emergency needs for all the affected -- at least in the main urban areas -- would be met by Saturday night, though supplying outlying villages would take longer.
For people still waiting for the state to help they seemed empty words, after spending a sixth bitterly cold night under whatever shelter they had made for themselves, and accusations of mismanagement and unfairness of handing out tents were rife.
"They give tents to supporters of the government party. Village leaders hand out tents to their friends and relatives. Public servants get the best tents," 60-year-old Kahraman Kaya told Reuters, tramping the streets of Ercis with other grim-faced, red-eyed and unshaven men.
The region is predominantly Kurdish, and the government is trying to build bridges with the ethnic minority while fighting a long-running separatist insurgency by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, making it particularly sensitive to any accusations of neglect.
Parades and receptions Saturday for Republic Day, celebrating the formation of the modern Turkish state, were canceled.
Saturday, a female suicide bomber killed at least two people and wounded a dozen more in an attack on a tea house close to the offices of the ruling AK Party in Bingol, another town in the mainly Kurdish area.
FREEZING TEMPERATURES
No official figures were available for the number of people made homeless by the quake. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies put the number of "affected people" at 50,000.
In Van, a city of 1 million people which suffered less damage, tests were being conducted to ascertain whether the water was drinkable.
Lights were switched back on in some buildings in the center of Ercis Friday and a pharmacy, a bank and a computer parts shop re-opened, but there was no running water.
Electricity cables were run to the camps so people could plug in whatever appliance they had salvaged next to the tents.
Food distribution centers are giving out water, nappies, bread, hot soup and pasta in plastic trays, but survivors say their main problem is long-term shelter from the cold.
Nezihe Saglam, 38, fretted for her children as she sat around a small camp fire with other family members who had pitched three tents in a garden.
"We have a stove in the tent but it's freezing at night, and the stoves can't help the freezing temperatures. What if the kids get infections?" she said.
Niyazi Dogac Gucbilek, a health official drafted in to run a mobile hospital near a camp in Ercis of more than 330 tents, said the main task was countering acute respiratory illnesses and blood pressure problems, as winter fast approaches.
"Cold is the biggest problem now. We had many diarrhoea cases In the first few days but now it is down to normal levels," he told Reuters. He said 10 babies had been born there in the past five days, all perfectly healthy.
The United States said Friday it would join other countries answering Turkey's call for help to supply tents, containers and prefabricated housing.
Thai flood frustration grows
Source - Reuters
By Robert Birsel
BANGKOK | Tue Nov 1, 2011 9:34am EDT
(Reuters) - Thai authorities tried to stem growing anger among flood victims on Tuesday as water swamped new neighborhoods and the government began mapping out a plan costing billions of dollars to prevent a repeat disaster and secure investor confidence.
The floods began in July and have devastated large parts of the central Chao Phraya river basin, killed nearly 400 people and disrupted the lives of more than two million.
Inner Bangkok, protected by a network of dikes and sandbag walls, survived peak tides on the weekend and remains mostly dry.
But large volumes of water are sliding across the land to the north, east and west of the city, trying to reach the sea and being diverted by the city centre's defenses into new suburbs as they recede in others.
In the northeastern city neighborhood of Sam Wa, angry residents demanded the opening of a sluice gate to let water out of their community. Residents jostled with police on Monday and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered that the gate be opened by a meter (three feet).
But city authorities warned that the flow through the gate could move via a major canal into large parts of the city which are now dry.
"We are opposed to it but the government has ordered the BMA to open the gate, so more water will come," said Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) spokesman Jate Sopitpongstorn.
"It could reach the Bang Chan industrial estate. We have to see the consequences," he told Reuters, adding that residents of the area had been told to be on alert.
Yingluck's government and the Bangkok authority represent opposing factions in Thailand's strife-plagued politics.
An expert from the government flood management team played down the danger to inner Bangkok of opening the sluice gate, saying the flow was relatively small compared with the amount coming in through leaks in the city's dikes.
"Inner Bangkok is not so much an issue," said academic Anon Sanitiwong Na Ayutthaya. "At least we know what to do, it's just a matter of time to fix the leaks."
The disaster has been the first big test for the government of Yingluck, the younger sister of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.
Yingluck, a political novice, took over this year after an election that many Thais hoped would heal divisions that triggered street violence last year.
Saving central Bangkok from a ruinous flood would be an important victory. The city's 12 million people account for 41 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product.
But prolonged misery in outlying areas and heavily flooded provinces to the north would take the gloss off any victory for Yingluck, especially given a perception that those areas have been sacrificed to save the capital.
To the north of Bangkok, Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya provinces have been largely inundated for weeks, along with seven industrial estates that have sprung up over the last two decades on what used to be the central plain's rice fields.
"BE PREPARED"
People eked out a living in the flooded provinces on Tuesday with women cooking over gas stoves in the shade of plastic sheets strung up over pick-up trucks while men in their underwear cast fishing nets into water covering roads.
Cars, trucks and taxis were bumper to bumper for about 20 km (12 miles) on an elevated road out of Bangkok, parked and abandoned safely above the murky tide.
The cabinet met to work out a recovery plan that one cabinet minister said this week could cost up to $30 billion, including an overhaul of the water-management system and rehabilitation of industrial estates.
Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Kittirat Na Ranong said the government would need to borrow "hundreds of billions of baht" to recover and prevent a repeat of disaster during the annual rainy season.
"Any investor, ambassador, I talk to, they never ask how high the floodwaters are but what will Thailand actually do to prevent this from happening again," Kittirat told reporters.
The government would invite experts from inside and outside the country to help draw up the plan and he would approach the Asian Development Bank to discuss financing.
"We have to be prepared for the future," Kittirat said. "Preparation and the prevention of floods and drought is something we must start to do now."
Yingluck said on Monday she had assured Japanese investors there would be no repeat of the disaster. The government expects it will take three months to get the flooded industrial estates back on their feet.
Thailand is the second-largest exporter of computer hard drives and global prices are rising because of a flood-related shortage of major components used in personal computers.
Thailand is also Southeast Asia's main auto-parts maker and Japan's Honda Motor Co said car production could be difficult in the second half of its business year ending in March. Its Ayutthaya plant has suspended work indefinitely.
The Bank of Thailand has nearly halved its projection of economic growth this year to 2.6 percent from July's 4.1 percent estimate, and said the economy -- Southeast Asia's second largest -- would shrink by 1.9 percent in the December quarter from the previous three months due to the floods.
Headline inflation rose to 4.19 percent in October from 4.03 percent the previous month as the flooding pushed up some prices but the central bank said the rises were temporary and it would focus on longer-term factors in setting policy.
The floods submerged four million acres (1.6 million ha), an area roughly the size of Kuwait, and destroyed 25 percent of the main rice crop in the world's largest rice exporter.
The deluge was caused in part by unusually heavy monsoon rain but the weather has been mostly clear for the past week. The BMA said 2,245 mm (more than seven feet) of rain had fallen this year to the end of October, 40.8 percent above average. ($1=30.75 baht)
Thai floods batter global electronics, auto supply chains
Source - Reuters
By Ploy Ten Kate and Chang-Ran Kim
BANGKOK/TOKYO | Fri Oct 28, 2011 12:06pm EDT
(Reuters) - Manufacturers of car parts to computer hard drives are worst hit in Thailand and face a bleak key holiday selling season due to massive floods, which have shut down production.
Japanese car makers that had just started to recover from the March earthquake and tsunami that disrupted their supply chains are now facing shortages of key parts made in Thailand, a key manufacturing base in Southeast Asia.
Companies including Toyota Motor Co and Honda Motor Co have already curtailed production at plants as far away as North America because their Thai suppliers are under water.
Computer makers such as Lenovo Group Ltd, the world's No.2 PC maker, have also been affected. Lenovo said earlier this week it expected some constraints on hard disk drive supplies through the first quarter of next year due to the floods.
Samsung Electronics, the world's top computer memory chip maker, said on Friday that it expected Thailand's floods to dampen sales of personal computers and prices of DRAM chips used in PCs.
"We expect PC (sales) to be lower than expected. As a result, we expect weakness in DRAM prices," an executive at Samsung told an earnings conference call.
Taiwan's Acer Inc said it has already started to raise prices on future orders to cope with rising costs.
Thailand is the No. 2 maker of hard disk drives (HDD) after China and makes about half of global output taking place there, meaning damage caused by flooding could keep factories closed or hobbled for months, analysts and executives said.
Thailand has become a major manufacturing center due to government incentives, tax breaks and land acquisition deals specifically designed to lure automotive companies and high-tech manufacturers.
Complicating the situation are the tight links global companies have forged in their supply chains to minimize holding expensive inventories and which utilize "just in time" manufacturing. As seen during the March earthquake in Japan, when one link is broken, it can disrupt production on a global scale.
Flooding has forced the closure of seven industrial estates in Ayutthaya, Nonthaburi and Pathum Thani provinces bordering Bangkok, causing billions of dollars of damage and putting about 650,000 people temporarily out of work.
"Inventory in the supply chain should be able to satisfy demand until late November to early December, but if the situation does not improve, many products will not be able to be produced because hard disk production is very concentrated in Thailand and the plants in China and Malaysia are not enough to support industry demand," said Charles Lin, chief financial officer of Pegatron Corp.
The company is the main contract manufacturer for Asustek Computer Inc.
Top hard drive makers Western Digital and Seagate both have factories in Thailand. Western Digital's factories are closed and Seagate has warned it could face parts shortages even though its plants are running.
Computer makers may be affected longer than other manufacturers because their manufacturing plants require "clean room" environments to fabricate precision computer components.
Asustek's Chief Financial Officer, David Chang, said the floods were already pushing up prices for hard drives by as much as 20-40 percent.
"If the situation persists, not only notebook production will be affected, but shipments for desktops and other components will also drop," he said.
"Our inventory can last us until the end of November and our Q4 guidance to be given out next Monday will be more conservative to reflect the impact."
Industry officials said it may take as long as 45 days after the waters recede to be up and running. Car makers could however, be as affected if the supply shortages include electronic components.
A spokeswoman for Quanta Computer, the world's top contract PC maker and whose clients include Hewlett Packard Co, said its clients have not been affected much "so far."
"Usually under tight inventory environment, first-tier companies enjoy priority to get the materials because they have stronger bargaining power," said Carol Hsu.
CARS AND SANDBAGS
Toyota Motor officials in Thailand said the company had shifted ready-made parts used to produce pick-up trucks and modified pick-up trucks to its Gateway City facility in Thailand's Chachoengsao province.
The facility there is 44 meters above sea level, said Vudhigorn Suriyachantananont, senior vice president of Toyota Motor Thailand.
Wall of sandbags are protecting the plant and "tools and machinery are sealed and stored in high places," he said.
Daihatsu Motor Co said on Friday it would reduce work to produce Toyota-badged cars at two Japanese factories next week due to a shortage of parts from Thailand.
Daihatsu, the minivehicle unit of Toyota, said it expects no impact from the Thai floods on its own minicar production in Japan and in Indonesia and Malaysia at least for November.
The Japanese government announced on Friday it would allow Japanese companies operating in Thailand to bring some Thai workers to Japan to make up for lost production.
Japan's trade ministry said the Thai workers would only be allowed in for six months and would not be allowed to bring their families.
BBC Video - Delivering aid to flood-hit Thai communities
BBC Video - Thai floods trap baby elephants
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