After Historic Floods, Hat Yai’s Mayor Returns to Lead Cleanup
The floodwaters that swallowed large swathes of Hat Yai last week are receding, yet the political tide continues to rise. While residents hose down mud-caked shopfronts and haul ruined furniture to the curb, many are wondering where their once-omnipresent mayor, Narongporn ‘Pan’ Na Phatthalung, has gone and whether the city is any safer the next time clouds gather over Songkhla.
A City Left Gasping for Air
Torrents driven by a monsoon torrent collided with a rare rain-bomb and pushed a 1.5–2 metre waterline through neighbourhoods faster than most evacuation plans could open. By dawn trucks had turned into pontoons, crippled utilities severed phone signals, and entire blocks lived by torchlight along power-cut corridors. Volunteers ferried hot meals to stranded families squatting in makeshift rooftop shelters while engineers scrambled to fire up emergency pumps that were never designed for this volume. The regional meteorological office later confirmed the downpour outstripped the 2027 benchmark by nearly 40 %. For locals, however, the numbers mattered less than the sight of Kanchanawanit Road vanishing under what looked more like a khlong than a highway.
What Went Wrong Behind City Hall’s Doors
Critics say the disaster exposed longstanding structural flaws. A green-flag false alarm was issued just two days before the deluge, reflecting a fragmented command chain in which city, provincial, and irrigation officials work from different playbooks. Engineers relied on an outdated drainage map produced before two shopping malls and a new ring road altered runoff patterns. Rescue crews had just five operational boats, a consequence of a four-month budget freeze. Meanwhile, clogged canals—narrowed by years of informal construction—slowed discharge toward Songkhla Lake. The resulting chaos turned slow evacuation orders into midnight dashes, fuelling social-media fury and reopening wounds from past political rivalries inside the council chamber.
Tracking Down the Missing Mayor
During the earliest hours of the storm Mayor Pan livestreamed ankle-deep inspections and assured citizens that pumps were “ready.” Then, as water climbed, a sudden social-media silence ensued. On Wednesday he resurfaced with a public apology broadcast on provincial radio, offering a blunt admission that intensity projections had been wrong. Aides insist he spent the intervening days on late-night field visits, coordinating a rapid damage audit and negotiating heavy-duty pumps from the Royal Irrigation Department. Yesterday he joined the governor to plot cross-agency logistics, and an evening radio appearance hinted at a longer-term rebuilding plan. Still, many residents want to see him waist-deep alongside them, not only behind meeting-room microphones.
Can Hat Yai Bounce Back?
Tomorrow’s Big Cleaning Day aims to rally more than 1,000 volunteers along with municipal truck convoys and excavators. Engineers say drains must be cleared within 72 hours if the city hopes to meet its cleared-debris timeline and achieve a seven-day recovery goal. A 3.6 billion-baht government contingency fund is earmarked for immediate road and school repairs, while banks and factories have pooled resources for public-private aid packages that include electric-motorbikes for rescuers and mobile health clinics. Hoteliers, desperate for year-end bookings, plan a “Hat Yai Alive” festival to showcase the city’s cultural tourism revival once streets are clean and power is stable.
Lessons for Other Thai Cities
Hydrologists warn that Bangkok, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and even Chiang Mai could face similar extremes unless they adopt a single command system that unifies local, provincial, and national responders. Insurance analysts tout parametric flood insurance to cushion small firms from downtime, while architects promote urban sponge design using permeable pavements. Railway engineers, jolted by submerged tracks in Hat Yai, study rail embankment retrofits and the Transport Ministry dusts off plans for an underground mega-tunnel to speed runoff to the Gulf. Meteorologists call for real-time rain radar linked directly to smartphones, and civil-society groups are setting up neighbourhood war rooms with walkie-talkies and code-red citizen alert apps. The takeaway, experts say, is clear: climate volatility is rewriting Thailand’s rainfall script, and every city hall must rehearse its lines before the next storm steals the stage.