After the Flood

Chiang Mai, October 2024

It's Sunday. The flood culminated last night but several neighbourhoods are still under water. Photos of rescue elephants carrying supplies to people stranded in their houses circulate around the Internet. The cages on their backs look heavy but they are luckier than the first known victims of this flood: two elephants from a sanctuary near Chiang Mai. Their deaths were confirmed just a few hours earlier.

The water and mud came in quickly and unexpectedly. Less than a week after the last floodwaters went down, heavy rains started again. The river reached record heights, as expected, and caused, supposedly, a once-in-50-years event.

For a brief few days in early September, my own house was at risk of flooding from a nearby river. The floods that swept over Central Europe eventually avoided my city altogether but other parts of the Czech Republic weren’t as lucky. Since then, every week has brought more news of destruction and lives lost to extreme weather events and floods. Chiang Mai became the next victim.

I head out to the affected area in Chiang Mai with my camera and decision to talk to people who would be willing to talk to me and photograph people who would be comfortable enough. I hand out my business cards and encourage everyone to drop me an email so that I can share the photos.

Just a few minute walk from the Old city walls, I meet a shop-keeper Ali.

After salvaging what they could from a shop at the badly affected night market, Ali and his friend stay on alert in an inflatable boat. It's lying on a sidewalk, only a few dozen metres from the flood line. Ali gives me some tips on how to move around. “Keep all your belongings above your head. You never know how deep it is. Should be only up to your knees on this road but if you go to the right over there...” and he points towards his neck, indicating the possible depth of water in the side alley. “We're staying here and will be ready to rescue people if anyone needs it.” 

When I'm walking past their shop a few hours later, Ali is just getting off his phone. “Let's go,” he nods at his friend. They hop on their motorbikes, rather than boat, but there's no time for explanation.

Water has largely receded from this street, leaving behind large murky puddles. Pick-up trucks drive up and down, carrying evacuated people, uniformed workers, saved personal belongings, bags of rubbish, demolished furniture. The American tourist I am talking to tries his best not to dip his suitcase in the water. He evacuated his hotel yesterday but needed to go back for his luggage. A young Thai couple walks past me, backpacks on, a cat carrier in the girl's hand, two yellow eyes staring at me. It was only a month ago when I thought my partner might need to evacuate with our cat too.

I peek through the gate of a buddhist monastery, only to see a novice, around 11 years old. He’s splashing water with a broom. If he wasn't wearing a bright orange robe, he would look just like any other kid reluctantly cleaning the house. He's not alone. Once on the monastery ground, I see around fifteen monks and novices cleaning the ever-present mud. Most of them are barefoot, with their stained robes tucked up, calves splattered with mud. I approach the monk closest to me, ask if he speaks English and whether I could take a few photos. 

He agrees and asks where I'm from. Their monastery houses just over twenty people and was lucky enough to only have around 50 centimetres of water. He reminds me that it is the second flooding in just two weeks. Many had only just finished cleaning up when the Ping river started rising again. Young monks seem not to mind the cleaning too much though, working swiftly and curiously watching me as I take photos. 

Across the street, a young crew is moving muddy water out of their weed dispensary shop. All furniture is dirty, people look worried. One of the crew chilling behind the cashier asks where I'm from.

“Czech Republic, do you know it?”

Yeah! Nedvěd,” he laughs, recalling the early 2000s football star Pavel Nedvěd. The shop is small, so I leave quickly to avoid being in the way.

Later on in the afternoon, in the dry part of the city, I am setting up my camera for a video interview. Our interviewee, a young Burmese woman woke up into a flooded house yesterday morning. Now, she's describing how she and two others walked for about half an hour through water up to their necks to reach safety. In some parts, the current was so strong they had to hold each other not to be swept away. 

“We got to the Central Festival and everyone looked as if nothing was happening, just getting their shopping done in this huge bright space. We were completely drenched and it seemed we were invisible. Nobody cared.”

She was right. If you walked around neighbourhoods far enough from the river, you would have no idea about the severity of the floods. Tourists taking photos in front of the city gates, students at the local university enjoying a couple of drinks on Friday night, crowds of people in the air-conditioned Maya shopping centre.

It’s Monday and almost all of the water seems to have disappeared from the city centre. The floods have moved downstream.

What’s left are thick layers of slippery brown mud, making every step a hazard. On larger streets, the traffic has pushed most of it to the sides and created a dry corridor in the centre of the road that is used by the few pedestrians around. In smaller streets and alleys, asphalt is fully covered by the mud and I’m doing my best not to fall down.

The area around the Waroro market is packed with people. Each house, each little shop has its own crew that cleans away the flood remnants. People use water hoses to get rid of the dirt covering mannequins, large rolls of fabric, shelves that usually hold their goods, floors, bikes. An elderly lady with a worried look sits in front of a shop that’s too messy to recognise its original purpose. A younger man, possibly her son, quickly moves around, trying to restore order in the midst of chaos.

Even knowing how much the water has dropped over the past two days, the river still looks imposing. Some people suggested that floods were a result of Chinese dams upstream, releasing large amounts of water without warning. I haven’t found much to confirm but given the Southeast Asian governments' obsession with dams, I can also imagine that such information wouldn’t be very popular with the authorities. Others blame deforestation happening in the mountains that are not able to absorb heavy rainfall. Both might be partially true. Climate change, however, seems to be the common denominator of all of the disasters happening in the previous weeks.

I step over bananas lying on the sidewalk. Street vendors and small shop owners might not be able to return to this area and the nearby market for the next couple of days. Local bar owner is telling me how they live from day-to-day earnings and not being able to work even for a short while puts their already tight budget under a lot of pressure.

Large businesses, banks and hotels have also been affected. What I see here though, in the couple of streets between Tha Pae and Chang Moi roads are ordinary people. Some of them poor, very few (if any) rich. All of them dealing with the effects of climate change right inside of their homes.

Who is going to pay for this?

Twenty-eight years after countries around the world agreed that climate change is real and legally committed to tackling it, the international community convened in the oil epicenter of the world last year: the UAE. Under the auspices of its sultan and the watchful eye of the fossil fuel lobby, the conference failed to present any concrete steps to address climate change at its root: curbing greenhouse gases.

However, a limited progress has been made on a slightly different front. After years of advocacy from the global civil society, the COP28 finalised the plans for the Loss and Damage Fund, fund providing financial aid for damages caused by the climate change. The mechanism will be temporarily hosted by the World Bank and is supposed to be funded by countries that have historically contributed most to the climate change. On the receiving end would then be the states and communities most threatened by this phenomenon.

Almost one year later and only a few months before the COP29, there are still more questions than answers, How will it be ensured that the money truly gets to the communities that actually need them? How will we ensure that countries that have promised to finance the fund will keep that promise?

Mountains of rubbish bags in the little alleys of Chiang Mai, touched by the floods, tell the story of the enormous costs already incurred. Thailand has been ranked as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Meanwhile, the Loss and Damage Fund seems to be no more than a drop in the gradually rising ocean.

Before turning back, I chat for a while with Peter, an English teacher at a local school. He and his colleagues have been cleaning since eight in the morning. Despite their smiles, I sense it must have been incredibly frustrating. At about five in the afternoon, the playground is still covered by huge puddles of mud. “If you stood here two days ago, the water would be up to your neck,” describes Peter and asks if I could take a photo of him. I oblige, pleased to see that he hasn’t put down the squeegee but still holds it, with a degree of pride.

Rightly so. The school has lost equipment, furniture. While the students will be on a break for a couple more weeks, the school staff are doing what they can to make sure they actually have somewhere to return to.

In front of the school, a pump churns brown water into a canal. The sun is blazing and even though it’s late afternoon, it must be still well over 30 degrees. The heat turns thin layers of mud into a wrinkly crust that changes into dust. Motorbike drivers cover their mouths with scarves and sleeves as they drive through the yellowish cloud levitating above the road. Unless more rain washes it away, I have a feeling that dust will linger for some time. As will the mosquitoes. The pockets of standing water scattered around the city seem like the perfect breeding ground.

I discover a cockroach that managed to save itself by climbing on an incense stall in front of a temple. It reminds me of a succinct and disturbing Facebook comment I had read a day earlier in relation to the floods: “Where all the snakes go?”

Walking through the muddy alleys is slow and considering my new snake paranoia, I return to Old town along the Tha Pae Road.

The closer I am to the city walls, the more usual life seems. Tourists sipping on smoothies in plastic cups. Bored shop owners people watching. Only an occasional pick-up passes by with a fresh load of muddy bin bags. Once I stand in front of the city gates, it seems like there has never been any flood at all.