Published in Good Morning Chiangmai News, Thailand – May 2002

Hot Season
And Getting Hotter!

CHIANG MAI, Thailand – 11 Apr 2002 - At approximately 7:00pm on Thursday 11th April 2002, as Chiangmai was anticipating the annual Songkran water fights, a solitary spark rose into the air over a poor area of southern Chiangmai city.  Within ten minutes, the wooden shanty home was a bed of cinders and the owners homeless.

During the hot season, everything in Thailand is tinder dry, yet still people play with fireworks and carelessly throw cigarette ends away.  The spectacle of “flashing the oil” often seen in Thai cooking is a particular hazard in older wooden homes.  Who knows why this fire started, but praise must be given to the Royal Thai Fire Brigade who were on the scene within minutes of that first spark being seen.  Crowds hindered the progress of other emergency vehicles arriving in the second wave – one youth parking his motorcycle directly in the path of a fire truck.

Crowds were still arriving long after the fire was a layer of charcoal on the ground, and our photographer was asked by one old man in just a sarong, “where’s the fire” when he was less than 20 metres from it and five minutes too late. Leaving the scene by motorbike, the photographer found every lane, for hundreds of metres, blocked by spectators and their vehicles. Luckily the ambulances didn’t need to speed someone to hospital.

This fire came a few days after two more-modern, concrete houses were gutted by fire only a few hundred metres away.  Again we do not know the exact cause.  Should speculation and rumour focus on the depressed property sales market and the unwillingness of owners to rent out empty properties in order to pay the mortgage?  But, as they say, that’s another and bigger story.  Meanwhile, be careful around flammable materials in this hot season, which is predicted to last an unusually long time; at least until the end of July.  If you don’t, it could be your property that has big red trucks outside it.

Stopped the press it did !

Sunday 21st April – 8:45pm.   A loud, sharp bang was heard from the direction of Hang Dong and our photographer looking out from his roof top tree house saw the tell tale glow of another fire in progress just south of Mahidol Road.  Racing off on his trusty black steed, he wasn’t quick enough to catch any action pictures; he couldn’t even find the fire so obvious from the balcony.  Minutes, mere minutes had passed, but whatever it was had burnt so fiercely and violently that it had burnt itself out.  The sky-lightening glow was gone.  Remember – it takes very little to start a fire in this heat – how hot are your electrical possessions?