Although most of the capital is still dry, the prime minister is urging people near the city’s Chao Phraya river to move to higher ground.

In a televised address on October 25 evening, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced parts of central Bangkok could soon be under water, saying that despite efforts to divert and drain flood waters away from the capital, the volume of water is more than they can handle.

She said inner Bangkok will be flooded if flood barriers collapse or the coastal tide is higher than expected. Flooding in the capital would range in depth from a low of 10 centimeters up to one and a half meters, because different areas of Bangkok have different heights, Shinawatra added.

A surge of flood water from the north and east is expected to arrive in Bangkok on October 26, straining the city’s flood barriers and drainage canals.

One test will be whether flood barriers around the perimeter of the city’s more heavily populated areas can successfully divert flood waters away from the downtown. If the barriers hold, communities outside the dikes are expected to be under as much as 1.5 meters of water.

VOA