Tropical storm kills 4 in Thailand
BANGKOK, Thailand — Tropical storm Pabuk has claimed four lives in southern Thailand, police said on Sunday.
A woman evacuated to a center providing shelter for villagers from the storm was found dead in a canal in southern Thailand’s Surat Thani Province on Sunday morning.
She was the fourth death from Pabuk, the decade’s worst storm that has been hitting the country since Friday.
The woman, 57, was found floating face down in the canal with no wounds of physical attack on her body. Villagers said she left the evacuation center by motorbike on Saturday and never returned. Police believed she had fallen into the canal after an accident and she may have drowned.
The tropical storm landed on Nakhon Sri Thammarat province at Friday noon, bringing torrential rains, strong winds and flash floods. It has moved over the western coast of Thailand where its ferocity has dropped. The storm left three more dead and hundreds of homes damaged.
Chayaphol Thitisak, director general of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said one crew member on a fishing boat was reportedly killed and another was missing due to the tropical storm in the sea off Pattani province, while two elderly people were reportedly killed in Nakhon Si Thammarat province on Friday.
The authorities prepared for the storm by evacuating almost 29,000 people in provinces most at risk, the DDPM said. In the hardest-hit province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, about 800 kilometers south of Bangkok, 32 electric poles were felled, transformers exploded and communications lines were down in some districts, according to the department.
Eight southern provinces of Thailand have been affected by Pabuk, including Chumphorn, Songkhla, Phatthalung, Pattani, Phetchaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Surat Thani and Nakhon Si Thammarat.
With a wind speed of 55 km per hour, Pabuk has moved from one side of southern Thailand to the other or from the Gulf of Thailand to the Andaman Sea, with strong winds, high tides, heavy rains and flash floods on Saturday, according to DDPM.
It is feared the storm could devastate Thailand’s famous tourist destinations on the shores of the Andaman Sea.