The rehabilitation of the Mae Sai border community from flooding that caused mud to sink is progressing slowly because nearly 7,000 houses are mostly covered in mud. It is expected that it may take up to 6 months to restore Mae Sai to its original state.
The Mae Sai border has been raining intermittently since morning, making the Mae Sai border community’s recovery more difficult, even though it has been 12 days since the major flood. Many areas are full of mud, such as Tham Pha Chom village in Wiang Phang Kham sub-district, which is located next to the Sai River, which was severely damaged and filled with huge piles of mud and pieces of wood that were swept away by the flood and stuffed into almost 170 houses. For example, Phi Tan’s house, which is a two-and-a-half-story, half-concrete, half-wood house, was flooded with mud almost reaching the roof. She had to demolish it and did not know where to find money to rebuild it.
From the aerial view, the damage in Tham Pha Chom village is still visible, coverin
g a large area. This makes the restoration difficult. Although officials have mobilized people and machinery to scoop up the mud in the village for 5 days, they have been able to remove mud from 17 out of 170 houses, or only about 10%. But after this, removing the mud from the village may be faster because the road in the village has been opened and machinery and soldiers have been mobilized to scoop up the mud from the village. But it will take several more days to remove all the mud from the village.
Like Sai Lom Joy Market, Mae Sai’s famous border market, there was also damage to nearly 200 shops and a lot of mud. Officials mobilized machinery to scoop up the mud from the market, but it was slow because there was a lot of mud and each shop was quite narrow. Some places required a small backhoe or manpower to dig it out. It was the same for many communities on the Mae Sai border that were severely damaged. The mayor of Mae Sai Subdistrict said that restoring nearly 7,000 houses was quite difficult because
each house was covered in mud. Restoring Mae Sai could take up to 6 months.
Source: Thai News Agency