Elephants evacuated from flooded

Meanwhile, the elephant camp's owner, Laitongrian Meepan, who has about 100 of the beasts under his care, is threatening to bring the entire herd to Bangkok and demand that the Royal Irrigation Department compensate him for the damages the floods have done to his fields of elephant feed.

Some parts of the kraal have been under at least 30 centimetres of water since Tuesday.   

"The elephants and I will meet the prime minister and demand the department's director general be sacked because of the problems I have undergone thanks to the Ayutthaya Provincial Irrigation Office. Around 400 of the 1,000 rai where I grow grass, corn, banana and sugarcane for the elephants are under water and I don't have enough food for them," Laitongrian said.

He explained that normally up to 20 tonnes of feed is collected from the fields every day, but he has only been able to collect about 10 tonnes after the floods. He complained that the authorities involved did not warn residents before they released water from the Chao Phya Dam.

"I expect the damage to be worth about Bt10 million and want compensation because they did not give me advance warning," he said.

Laitongrian's kraal was initially flooded in the first week of October, but incurred little damage.

However, Ayutthaya Provincial Irrigation Office director Weerachai Jitbanthao insisted that the provincial governor had been notified on October 28 of their plan to release water.

"We are trying to ease the floods by releasing water through irrigation canals, which have enough capacity. We try to avoid flooding people's farmlands," Weerachai said.

Yesterday, some conflicts between residents and farmers in Ayutthaya's Bang Ban district were also reported. The residents apparently wanted authorities to channel floodwaters into paddy fields, while the farmers refused to let that happen.