FIREFIGHTERS FORCED TO TACKLE SLIPPERY CUSTOMERS
WHEN the latest distress call came into Phinyo Pukphinyo’s fire station in Bangkok, it was not about a burning home or office building.
Instead, the caller needed urgent help with a far more common problem facing Thailand’s capital: snakes.
A 2-metre-long python was dangling from the caller’s garage roof, and after rushing to the scene, Phinyo quickly removed the slithering reptile.
The number of snakes ending up in urban homes is on the rise in Bangkok, in part because of development pains in the vast metropolis of about 10 million people.
Tara Buakamsri, Thailand country director for Greenpeace South-East Asia, said the city is seeing more snakes because it sits on a “flood plain with a wetland ecosystem which is a habitat for amphibians, including snakes,” and housing expansions in recent years have curtailed their land.
Phinyo said his fire station gets more calls to catch snakes than to put out fires. “We have no choice but to learn how to handle them,” he said.