LTO Cambodia: Floods, Helicopters and Priorities

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Floods, Helicopters and Priorities

Compare and contrast:

Seven workers at Cambodian hydropower dam swept away by floods
Sep 15, 2011, 3:22 GMT

Phnom Penh - Seven workers are believed to have drowned after being swept away by floodwaters at a hydropower dam being built in southern Cambodia, national media reported Thursday.

The Cambodia Daily newspaper said the men had tried to swim to safety at the 540-million-dollar Tatay hydropower dam in Koh Kong province.

A monitor with local rights group Adhoc said they were in a group of 70 workers trapped for two days without food after water submerged a bridge connecting the construction site to the riverbank.

Adhoc's Neang Boratino was quoted as saying nine men had tried to swim to the riverbank on Saturday, but seven were swept away.

'(The workers) were afraid of dying because they were out of food,' he said. 'The company did not find a way to lift them out even though they have the equipment.'

He said the other workers had since been evacuated.

The provincial police chief confirmed the seven were missing.

The 246-megawatt Tatay dam, which is due to be completed by 2014, is being built by Chinese state-owned company China National Heavy Machinery Corp, which could not be reached for comment, according to the Phnom Penh Post...

In summary, 70 Cambodian workers at a Chinese managed hydro-electric project are trapped by rising waters for days without food. In desperation, some try to swim out and are swept away and killed, most of their bodies have still not been recovered.

Choppers rescue tourists caught by Cambodian flood
September 22, 2011

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Flash floods at a centuries-old temple in northeastern Cambodia stranded about 200 foreign tourists Thursday, forcing officials to use helicopters to evacuate them to a nearby town.

The group visiting the 10th century Banteay Srey temple included tourists from the U.S., South Korea, France, Britain and Russia, district official Mom Vuthy said. The flooding also forced thousands of area residents to abandon their homes for high ground, or to camp on roofs or in trees, he said.

Brittny Anderson, 26, from Oregon said she was grateful for local residents who brought food to the stranded tourists as they waited on high ground for the helicopter rescues.

"I am scared for the villagers whose houses were under water," she said in a telephone interview. "I heard that the villagers had climbed trees and I'm very worried for their safety."...

In summary, a couple of hundred foreign tourists visiting a old temple are trapped by rising waters for a few hours. The government sends 3 helicopters to ferry them out. All are safe, back in their hotel rooms in Siem Reap.

1 comment:

Phnom Penh pastSeptember 24, 2011 at 11:50 PM
As soon as I read about the 200 tourists being rescued similar ideas came to mind. Not so much about the Koh Kong workers, but the thousands of local people who will be lucky to receive anything in the way of assistance over this holiday period.
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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.