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6.1.4 Muang Phuket
The coastline of the island of Phuket is continuously exposed to sea erosion and in recent past has to cope up with sudden devastating events, such as tsunami tidal wave of the 26
December 2004 which has had occurred as a result of a massive earthquake in the Sumatra Island. The impact created by the massive tsunami tidal wave, was the highest reported
devastation due to a natural disaster in the Andaman Coast. Muang Phuket suffered heavy losses to assets and its natural resources. 13,065 people died or disappeared during the event;
402 residences were totally destroyed; 550 partially. Among the dead were many foreign tourists who came to Phuket to spend the Christmas and yearend holidays. The utility
facilities and coastal infrastructure of the island were heavily damaged. In total the overall damages cost more than 13,000 million Baht Strategy for Provincial Development Unit,
Phuket Governor’s Office and National Economic and Social Development Board.
Subsequently a Strategic plan has been developed to curb the potential impacts of such disasters by the authorities. The event created much needed awareness on natural disaster
events, associated risk and city governments as well as the provincial authorities have undertaken various measures to address the needs for risk reduction. This sort of immediate
interventions were needed to boost up the confidence of the important economic sectors such as tourism, commerce, hotel industry etc which are the main source of income of the Muang
Phuket area. Among the measures are new land use planning regulations to reduce risk within the coastal zone, special building and enterprise development guidelines for coastal areas,
setting up effective response mechanisms such as training of 1
st
responders, installation of tsunami early warning towers, etc. There were several simulation exercises to evaluate the
effectiveness of such measures and overall all such measures created much needed public awareness and received political acceptance which can be easily extended to other types of
natural hazards prevailing in Muang Phuket area.
Coastal zone of the Muang Phuket is also very much exposed to irreversible damages on its coral reefs due to high concentration of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere that tends
to influence in increase of sea temperature. Reef-building corals are a significant component of the rich ecosystem that provides considerable resources to coastal population. They also
serve as a buffer against strong waves that erode coastlines during storms. Currently the coral cover development is declining at a rate of one to two per cent annually due to destructive
measures such as fishing, tourism, sedimentation caused by discharge of material as a result of development activities in the coastal area, eutrophication is a depletion of oxygen in
water due to untreated water run-off, dredging and probably also due to climate change. According to the Phuket Marine Biological Centre PMBC, coastline of Muang Phuket is
seriously endangered due to all these interlinked dynamics associated with coastal zone development.
According to the Thailand Meteorological Department, the southern part of Thailand has a relatively high exposure to tropical storms and typhoon. The risk is potentially growing as
many tropical storms and typhoons are getting reported from Pacific Islands. In such occurrence of tropical storms and typhoon in addition to high-speed winds, a depression zone
87 created can create heavy rainfall, flooding and incidents of destabilization of slopes due to the
topography of the area. Direct or indirect result of tropical storms and typhoon and associated natural hazard will be destructions to property, damages to infrastructure and other assets. In
fact, in the recent past, one of the regular hazard events prevail in Muang Phuket area to be landslide occurrences. Due to tsunami event now more population try to move on to higher
slopes realizing the danger in costal zone and as this tendency grows more and more causes of landslides also are getting reported. The map Figure 6.5 shows the location of previous
landslide events within the area. It is obvious that disturbance created due to uncontrolled development and urban settlements on the hill slopes triggered by heavy rainfalls is
responsible for increase in occurrence of landslides events in the area.
Figure 6.5. Landslide events map in Phuket province Source:GERD Kasetsart University, ADPC RECLAIM II
88 Surrounded by mountains in the Patong municipality area within Muang Phuket, a
considerable segment is highly vulnerable to multi-hazards; first the populations living in the mountain slopes and in the toe of the mountain are at risk due to landslides , while the
population living in the plain area are exposed to flash flood events and discharge of high sedimentation loads from mountains. Within Patong municipality about 20 of the area has
high to moderate susceptibility to landslides. The tropical climate variations participate thereby in creating instability of the slopes and as climate change influence to have more
high intensity rainfall events, more intense and frequent events of landslides are meant to occur and affect a larger segment of population more frequently.
Figure 6.6. Damages and destruction in Phuket Source: RECLAIM II, Municipality
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6.1.5 Muang Samut Sakhon
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