Is Bangkok Safe of Earthquakes? What Visitors Should Know
On a Friday afternoon, the city of Bangkok was hit by a huge earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale, killing thousands of people throughout Myanmar and Bangkok.
I was actually a little bit outside the city, not in the centre. I live along the Sukhumvit area, which is the area with all the high rise buildings, and I was a little bit further out. At first, I thought I was having a panic attack or something like that. Everything went wobbly, maybe like some sort of vertigo. I gripped the table, and it was only as I heard other people start to react that I realised it wasn’t the case.
I looked up and saw the telephone wires. Bangkok is obviously a city famous for its telephone wires everywhere, and they were doing something like a skipping rope between them. That’s when I knew something bad was happening. We realised the earthquake was happening, and then it suddenly ramped up a little bit. You saw panic set in for a few seconds.
Once it had mostly settled, most people had evacuated. Luckily, I was nearby some fields. We evacuated and accounted for most people, and the mood at the time wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too panicky. People were kind of okay afterwards. It was only when we realised what was happening to people who weren’t there, and after I’d spoken to my wife, that more panic set in.
I immediately wondered how I could get in touch with my family. I have a six month old, and I couldn’t get in touch with my wife straight away. It turned out she was on the 40th floor of our building, and it was way, way worse the higher up you were. She said things began to wobble, things started to fall off the wall, and, probably scariest of all, the building started to creak.
She grabbed the baby, who was on the potty at the moment, and they evacuated down the fire escape. Our pool was on the roof, so water was flooding down inside the building through the fire escape. She said that was the worst thing.
Evacuating from a Bangkok High Rise and Reuniting with Family
I managed to get in touch with her and immediately got back into the city, but obviously that was chaos, complete chaos. I managed to get a taxi. I think the driver also took a minute to realise what was going on because it was normal at first. Then he started getting phone calls and sharing videos of the buildings collapsing, and you could see panic around the city.
He dropped me off at Udom Suk, and then I had to get a motorbike. Luckily, people were still working, so I got on a motorbike, but the city was just chaos. People were flooding out onto the street. My big concern at the time was the aftershocks. I realised that being on the back of a motorbike on a bridge under a highway over a canal, in between two buses, with no helmet in 50 degree heat, probably wasn’t the best place to be.
Anyway, we managed to get there. I was reunited with my daughter, and then we looked at the damage. The news coming from our building suggested it had been affected worse than others. I’m in a hotel right now. We stayed with friends for one night and then booked a hotel. I was dubious at first about how much difference it would make staying in a hotel compared to our place, but this is a lot better.
The pictures coming out of our place show huge cracks down the wall, and we’re going to find out on Monday whether there’s structural damage. I won’t be going back until then.
Bangkok Building Safety and Hotel Checks After the Earthquake
The city did a good job of remaining calm and carrying on as normal. Taxis were operating immediately. The traffic was horrendous, but that’s cleared up now, and a lot of bars and restaurants were open in the evening. I was in W District in Phra Khanong, where we got some food and drinks, so the city itself remained open.
The main worry now is the structure of the buildings. One building in Chatuchak fell down, which is hugely problematic. People were still being evacuated, and they were trying to get people out of the building. Some people they knew were still alive and buried in the rubble. The main worry is whether other buildings are going to fall down.
The initial reaction was that, like a lot of people, I stayed out of my building, especially because it had been damaged. Buildings are mostly safe, but they need final checks from specialists to determine that. It looks like the specialists have been called in pretty quickly, and mine is scheduled for Monday. I assume they have to fly in from somewhere.
Some of the major hotels are used to earthquakes happening around the world, or they have experience with them. Some of the major hotel chains have cleared their checks already. I know there have been 6,000 requests from the government to inspect some of these buildings, so that isn’t going to clear up immediately.
What Visitors Should Check in Bangkok Hotels
If you’re flying in, especially in the next couple of days, the first thing you should do is reach out to the hotels and see what level of checks and safety inspections they have completed. Some have done preliminary checks and are fine. I’m in a hotel in Bangkok right now, and it looks fine. Everything is business as usual, and I’ve been looking around the walls. There are no major cracks or anything like that.
Some of these buildings are just better built than others. The government itself has released a note saying that most damage isn’t major, so things can go on as usual. But you also probably want to check the pools, because they will have drained and there will be inspections. People will be hesitant to refill them before they can guarantee that there won’t be any more aftershocks. If your pool isn’t running, you might want to change to a different hotel.
Check the other facilities in the building, especially the elevators. In my building, the lifts still aren’t running. There is one service lift that is working, but I live in a building full of thousands of people. That’s one of the main reasons I’m not going back. I don’t want to get stuck and have to walk up 40 flights of stairs. If you’re staying in a skyscraper building, check that the lifts are working there.
It looks like the aftershocks were not as big over the last couple of days. I thought I felt things, but then I looked around at other people reacting to it, so maybe it was in my head. Obviously, we’ve all got minor trauma from the earthquake happening. It’s almost 48 hours since the event right now. As far as I understand it, aftershocks can go on for weeks, but they are worst in the 48 hours afterwards.
Chatuchak Market is the famous weekend market, but it is right by where the building collapsed. As I understand it, it will probably be closed for the foreseeable future, at least for the next few weeks, because they are making way for rubble clearance. There are still people trapped underneath it.
Bangkok Flights Markets Tours and Whether the City Is Safe
Apart from that, the city is mostly back to normal. I’ve been walking around the streets, and everything mostly seems open. Some places, like a coffee shop we went to yesterday, seemed to be closed. I don’t know if that’s due to the earthquake or not. Since it was the weekend, it should probably have been open. The vast majority of bars, restaurants, and things to do are still open, so it’s not going to affect your trip too much in that sense.
Flights are also unaffected. My mother in law actually flew in a few hours after the earthquake, so that was another level of things to deal with. She was supposed to stay at our place, but we found a hotel near the airport for her. Her flight landed just hours after the event, so flights were not affected at all. I’ve seen crazy rumours on Facebook and the internet saying that the airport was shut for days. That’s just not true. She landed a few hours after the event, so flights should be unaffected too.
If you’ve got any tours or anything booked, reach out to the tour operators. I think they will probably be running, but make sure you check. It looks like most things are back to normal.
It’s up to you if you want to risk it. People are saying it’s mostly safe, but if you’ve got a trip coming up in the next couple of days or weeks, stay on top of things and make sure you reach out to the hotels and tour operators to confirm that it’s safe.
