Thailand Flood: Thousands Flee Capital City as Flood Waters Rise
Flooding Also Strikes El Salvador and Italy
High tides and heavy rains across the globe are currently responsible for hundreds of deaths, millions of displacements, and countless amounts of property damage; as three continents are ravaged by storms.
Floodwaters continue to wreak havoc in Thailand and El Salvador, while heavy rains and flash floods brought Italy into the battle with water as storms blanketing the nation.
The flooding in Thailand, which began three months ago, has affected a third of the country and is responsible for 366 deaths.
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But flood waters now are moving into the capital city and threatening more urban areas in the nation.
Thousands of residents in Bangkok chose to flee the capital city, which is being increasingly covered with water. Others built cement walls to protect their properties from the flood waters entering the city, AP has reported.
"The amount of water is gigantic," Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said. "Some water must spread into Bangkok areas but we will try to make it pass through as quickly as possible."
Some commercial flights were grounded Tuesday as flood waters broke past barriers protecting the capital city’s second largest airport.
Torrential rains also battered Central America, causing more than 100 deaths in the region.
More than 30 people died and more than 50,000 were displaced as flood waters caused landslides in El Salvador.
United Nations aid agencies are attempting to provide shelter, food and health care to the country, which is in the midst of one of the greatest disasters in its history, according to a U.N. report.
Estimates suggest at least 40 percent of El Salvador’s crops were destroyed in the storms.
"We've lost a significant amount of the harvest of beans, corn, coffee and other crops too. Thousands of homes were flooded, some were damaged, others destroyed,” President Mauricio Funes said to the BBC. “I can assure you that these losses will be considerable, greater than in other occasions in the past when we were affected by storms and similar natural phenomena.”
While Central American officials begin to plan a recovery strategy, European officials are just beginning to assess the damage caused by severe storms.
Nine people have died today in flash floods in Italy stemming from heavy rains blanketing the country.
Rome was under a flood alert, but did not suffer heavy damages, AP has reported. Tuscany and Liguria were the hardest hit regions of the country.
Borghetto Vara, a village in north-western Liguria, was the hardest hit, according to reports. Mud and flood waters raced through the village and destroyed at least one building.
Roads and bridges across the region were swept away by floodwaters. Italian officials have closed major highways and railways in the region and have no plans to reopen them before Sunday.
