SAFETY LAST
>> The government can’t prevent boys from being naughty any more than it can prevent squalls in an open sea. However, the government could have prevented two of the most deadly events to have captivated local and global attention recently.
Every sentient Thai and (literally) billions of others bit their nails, caught their breath and then let out a massive “HOO-yah” when the 13th and final Wild Boar came out of Tham Luang caverns on Tuesday. Millions of congratulatory tweets from well-wishers to America’s Twit-InChief nearly broke the internet.
Unfortunately, the rescue operation cost the life of an exceptional, good and decent man, former Petty Officer 1 Saman Gunan.
It is just as vital that people realise that his heroic death was preventable — maybe not in the cave where he died on July 6 but two weeks before that, on June 23. The naughty boys would not have been in the cave if the government had not failed them and the family of PO1 Saman.
There is supposed to be a posted notice warning of floods. There is supposed to be an erected barricade in place before the annual floods arrive. There is supposed to be an attendant to turn back visitors to the Tham Luang caverns when they turn deadly. Instead, there was only a standard sign warning of danger in July. The boys entered the cave in June.
Oopsie, explained Thanya Nethithammakul, head of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. That safety step was overlooked. He’ll try to do better.
Maybe. But give cynics their credit. At the same moment retired PO1 Saman was paying the ultimate cost of the Parks Department’s failures, an even more sobering, less elating search was also under way. Off the southern tip of Phuket, almost as far south as Mae Sai is north, first responders were recovering bodies from a sunken tourist boat.
Forty-seven... let’s repeat that, 47 Chinese tourists died in the entirely preventable sinking of the dive boat Phoenix. That is more deaths to Chinese visitors than the carefully planned Uighur terrorist bomb at the Erawan shrine.
The bomb was supposed to kill people and realistically could not be stopped. The day-trip tourist outing was most assuredly not supposed to kill anyone and should not have.
All that had to happen was for the boat captain to stay at shore when he got the weather warning of squalls. Or for the very controversial company owning the boat — possibly a foreign-Thai nominee affair — to order it to take shelter. Or for government patrols to order the Phoenix (and another capsized boat, the Serenita to get out of open waters in a manner that got respect from the captains.
None of that happened and 47 people lost their lives. The Chinese government and millions of its people are both sad and mad as hell. In response to the tragedy, thousands of Chinese tourists with trips planned to Phuket have cancelled their reservations.
The law and what some call the mai pen rai attitude has failed. It’s failed the family, friends, and fans of PO1 Saman and the families of the dead Chinese tourists. Let’s repeat that: The events that led to these deaths were all (and should be) preventable.
And culture knows that. Every society has a version of the tale of the grasshopper and the ant. Aesop’s grasshopper takes life easy while the ant stockpiles, and when winter comes, the grasshopper dies because of his stupidity. Safety and survival has a cost, which is diligence and self-responsibility, and those didn’t appear in both of these deadly calamities.
Promises don’t save lives, prevent catastrophe or ameliorate a disaster. Let’s not forget that immediately after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, all sorts of promises had also emerged.
The truth is harsh. The Indian Ocean tsunami warning buoys no longer work. Even the blue “tsunami evacuation route” signs are mostly gone. How difficult is it to check and renew them every couple of years? Most telling of all, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Centre was nowhere to be seen in the past two weeks.
At Mae Sai, consider the unlikely events that made the search and rescue effort come together successfully.
Narongsak Osotthanakorn had just been moved out of Chiang Rai following his complaints about officials attending to vanity projects instead of their duty. While he was packing to leave, news of the missing boys accidentally — but so fortunately — put him in charge as coordinator of the rescue mission.
His ability to organise saved both the missing boys and the day. Continuing to trust such ad-hoc arrangements guarantees that there will be more preventable deaths in the future.