Potential Natural Disasters

Thailand is a very fortunate country that seldom suffers from a major natural disaster of calamitous proportion. In fact, the only one in living memory is the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 225,000 people across a dozen countries (some as far as along the Africa’s eastern coast), with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and Thailand suffering massive social and economic damages, as well as significant losses of human lives. In Thailand, the worst hit area was the northern part of the country’s Andaman coast (Ranong, Phang-Nga, Phuket and Krabi provinces) with over 5,000 people killed and over 3,000 people gone missing, many of whom were international tourists who were vacation there at the time. From this experience, vigilance, precautionary and response measures have been put in place, both internationally and in-country, to prevent the repeat of a disaster of such proportion.

However, Thailand is not impervious to frequent natural disasters, albeit not extremely damaging by comparison to the tsunami. Most of these disasters are brought about by the country’s tropical climate, which usually result in either an inundation of water or the lack of it, as the case maybe. 

The following tables from the Thai Meteorological Department summarises the types of risks from natural disasters by regions across Thailand in the course of the year.