Flooded Honda Industrial Park, Thailand

Not even the 6 meter high water protection walls were enough to protect the industrial area of Rojana, where the Honda Plant is located, from the rising muddy waters of the Chao Phraya River. Although part of the cars were removed before the flood, a thousand of them were submerged during months and ended up destroyed. The Plant will be rebuilt at a cost of US$650 million. The floods, which were the consequence of a wet monsoon with more rain than normal, affected the country during many weeks in 2011and killed 700 people. They affected the center of the country as well as the metropolitan area of Bangkok, the capital city and main agglomeration with 12 million inhabitants, its economic dynamism and its technology companies. Used to flooding – nobody has yet forgotten the ones from 1983 and 1995 – Bangkok is known by the western visitors as the «Asian Venice» and shares therefore with its Italian twin city and alarming fate: they are drowning. And this is mainly the result of human action. Actually, the extraction of subterranean waters by its inhabitants and industries led to its sinking. Besides, the slowly raise of the sea level and global warming have contributed to this phenomenon. Floods might not only be more frequent but also more severe.