Pim and Denis Gray meet Khun Mechai to discuss burning sesson

[jko]

Khun Pim's excellent August editorial describes her meeting with Khun Mechai Viravaidya in Bangkok, accompanied by retired AP journalist Denis Gray. This is probably the most important step ever taken in our hopeless fight against the smoke.

 

Well done to both, this is a huge achievement.

 

But the article reveals - astoundingly - that "Bangkok wasn’t very aware, or didn’t truly understand, the urgency of our crisis". So what did the Prime Minister learn from his visit in April? That alone tells us how much needs to be done.

 

Meanwhile it's raining in Lanna, it's pleasant, memories are fading, and there is little news about preventing next year's burning season.

 

In view of the above, it is certainly going to happen again. If it does, it will be the death knell for business, commerce and tourism. Meanwhile, important people in business and travel are apparently doing nothing, except hoping that someone else will.

 

Pim, Denis and other committed campaigners, NGO's etc., cannot do this alone.

 

ONLY if the heads of businesses, hotels, travel companies, international schools, shops, retirement homes, etc., get together and raise their potentially powerful voice is anything likely to happen. Collectively, this would represent the profile which Pim refers to as: "those with power and influence"

 

Who else has more power and influence than those who keep the whole Chiang Mai economy together? And since they have the most to lose, apart from those who will die from lung disease, it cannot be difficult.

 

It just needs one senior CEO with the courage and commitment to start the ball rolling. Step up now please. Others will inevitably follow you, and in large numbers.

 

Please don't leave it until the first choking smoke descends on the whole of Lanna early next year.

=

[worgeordie]

Without doubt next year will just be the same as previous years,

because nothing will be done to prevent it,no good trying to put

the fires out once the hills are ablaze.

The only solution I can see is to get the Army,Police and any volunteers

up in the hills,camping out if necessary,so the arsonists know the 

Government and the people will no longer stand by and have their

health and businesses destroyed by the pollution from smoke and

burning.........will it happen, hell no.

regards worgeordie

[CNXexpat]

I will leave Chiang Mai next year for 3 months during the burning season for sure. No idea if I will travel abroad or only south of Chiang Mai. Bad for the shops and restaurants where I usually spend some 10,000 Baht every month. And I will not leave when the air is becoming really bad. I have to plan my trip during the next two months, book flights and accommodations. Can´t do that for a high price spontaneous. I know some people they´ll do the same.

 

If the fire fighter cars are spraying water in the air at the moat and don´t fight the fires by example beside the roads to Samoeng, where massive fires burned this year, if there is no single helicopter who fights the fires in the forests and if the farmers still burn their fields without risk of consequences, nothing will change in northern Thailand. The officials will discuss and promise a lot but nothing will happen. It´s the sad truth.

[donnacha]

It is not three months.

The dangerous part of the pollution is not the visible stuff, it simply tends to coincide with it. You should base your plans around when PM 2.5 reaches levels that are generally agreed to be harmful to human health.

Chiang Mai is already dangerous by the start of January, regardless of whether or not it looks bad. I usually get out by the second week of the new year, when flight prices have lowered a bit. I usually stay away until at least Songkran but, some years, the pollution does not drop below dangerous levels until May.

In short, to be safe, you have to get out for four months.

It saddens me, but Chiang Mai is not a city that any sensible person would live in all year round. I have friends who think they cannot afford to get out, that they should just soldier through, but they are massively underestimating the extent to which respiratory, neurological, and coronary conditions debilitate you, and how much money they can cost.

Unless you are absolutely confident that your insurance will cover the significant costs or having a heart attack or stroke in Thailand, not to mention the even bigger repatriation costs if you have to return home while ill, you should not be exposing yourself to some of the worst pollution in the world. You should not allow yourself to be a guinea pig in an unprecedented experiment.

 

Many people active in Chiang Mai forums and Facebook groups have a vested interest in downplaying the dangers. No-one who has invested in a business or property here wants to see the Chiang Mai boom end. They are entirely willing to lie when newbies ask questions along the lines of "I am coming to Chiang Mai in March, but now I have heard that there is a "burning season". Is it really that bad?".

They will shout down anyone who says it is, they will call them whiners, but then they all disappear during the actual burning season. I have watched this happen during every one of the past eight years.

I do not say any of this lightly. My plan was to retire in Chiang Mai. I just wanted a simple life there. Then I finally got around to researching this stuff properly. If you ignore the medical realities, you are heading for a complicated, painful, expensive and unnecessarily shortened life.

Look, the air is far from healthy during the rest of the year and I still go there: I am not seeking perfection. But staying there during periods when all the science says it is definitely harmful to you is just stupid.

 

 

[fhickson]

get out jan-may it appears

[Thailand]

Burning starts in earnest from December through to April/may.

 

Huge fines for landowners where fires are burning ,big jail sentences for arsonists. The fires are not difficult to see although many arsonists set them at night so they won't be seen! ????

 

Anyway, it will be same again next year we all know it very well.

[VillageIdiot]

26 minutes ago, Thailand said:

Burning starts in earnest from December through to April/may.

 

Huge fines for landowners where fires are burning ,big jail sentences for arsonists. The fires are not difficult to see although many arsonists set them at night so they won't be seen! ????

 

Anyway, it will be same again next year we all know it very well.

Spot on.

Government on every level from national to local has failed to deal effectively with this problem.

That situation will probably continue until the loss of revenue from tourism is greater than the cost of enforcing the seasonal ban on burning.

[from the home of CC]

unless you offer money not to burn don't expect change..

[rumak]

13 hours ago, jko said:

ONLY if the heads of businesses, hotels, travel companies, international schools, shops, retirement homes, etc., get together and raise their potentially powerful voice is anything likely to happen.

Here Here !  I suggest that on September 17th at 3PM every resident in the North goes outside and yells at the top of their voice :   STOP THE BURNING    STOP THE BURNING  !  

I pick 3 PM because maybe by then the powers that be will be back from their lunch and "meetings" and

not yet be on the way home or wherever.  If you want your voice to be heard yell loud and long.  

If that doesn't work then everyone stop working or going out until a complete ban is guaranteed.

I will forego my visit to Cynics Anonymous to join in.   This is a very big move on my part as I think there

is "a slim to none" chance of any meaningful change.   See me,  hear me..... on the 17th   

This post is of course tongue in cheek.  I applaud Pim and any effort to get this done.  And so I wait with

mask covered breath.

[clokwise]

The obvious solution to stop people burning every year is to build moobaans and shopping malls all the way up into the mountains. No more crops - no more fires. Simple.


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

[CNXexpat]

14 hours ago, donnacha said:

It is not three months.

At the end you can see everyday without rain some bigger fires and the smoke all over the year. I am living in Nam Phrae near the Grand Canyon. When I arrived my home five minutes ago I saw a lot of smoke beside the Canal Road and in the mountains.  

[sunnyboy2018]

4 hours ago, clokwise said:

The obvious solution to stop people burning every year is to build moobaans and shopping malls all the way up into the mountains. No more crops - no more fires. Simple.


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

They will burn Tires and plastic bags and construction site waste.

[dcnx]

Is this a joke?

 

Of course Bangkok knew. The levels were all over not only local news but a lot of international news as well. 
 

All that happened in this meeting was face saving as a lot of blowing wind up your butts.

[dcnx]

On 8/3/2019 at 4:02 AM, donnacha said:

I do not say any of this lightly. My plan was to retire in Chiang Mai. I just wanted a simple life there. Then I finally got around to researching this stuff properly. If you ignore the medical realities, you are heading for a complicated, painful, expensive and unnecessarily shortened life.

Very well said. You’d have to be a fool to retire here and deal with the pollution year after year. It’s literally taking time off of your life.

 

If all goes well I won’t see another burn season. I feel sorry for those of you who are stuck here and at the very least can’t go somewhere else during this toxic season. Even if when it’s not that bad, it’s still terrible and unhealthy.

[canthai55]

No one has mentioned the fact that most smoke comes from outside of Thai borders.

Unless all nations band together to stop it ... Nada will change

[chingmai331]

Burning serves some economic interests, which are often paramount in modern equations. And i am not talking only of the hill tribes doing slash and burn agriculture (as they have done so for ages) but also big corporates, big land owners, govt officials seeking payments, and, at times, arsonists. No one starts the fires without reasons, even if we cannot understand/accept those reasons.

Of course also true that much smoke is transnational and comes over the border from Laos, Burma, etc. 

Hard to see any change coming. Too much $$ involved, too much kowtowing and 'status quo' in Thai society. 

 

[VocalNeal]

On 8/2/2019 at 11:54 PM, worgeordie said:

he only solution I can see

The only solution I can see is to persuade farangs not to move to Chiang Mai and then the newcomers will stop complaining about the smoke. It is like moving next to an airport and then complaining about the noise.

 

Would it make a difference if Mr. Grey was a retired fireman instead of an old hack from AP?

[Cadbury]

On 8/2/2019 at 11:00 PM, jko said:

So what did the Prime Minister learn from his visit in April?

I thought from the media reports he went up there and fixed the problem. He dug some fire breaks with his spade and blew the smoke away with his leaf blower.

[brommers]

I suppose a class action law suit might focus the feeble mind of the governor & his cohorts. Would be happy to make a contribution to the cost.

[ThaiPauly]

I am surprised by how many people are still buying houses here.

There is a new Moo Bann being built across from mine and they are selling so well they have increased the prices.

 

If I had my time again this is THE LAST place I would want to spend my retirement in.

 

Love Thailand, but hate it up here in those dreaded months.....I have already booked to go away for April and will have to make plans for the rest of it.

 

Last year was exceptionally bad, I suppose we will just have to wait and see how bad it is next year????????