- Despite a history of flooding and forecasts of heavy La Niña rains, the Thai city of Hat Yai received little effective warning before floodwaters surged last November to devastating levels.
- Power, communications and access were cut, and rescue services struggled to reach flooded areas, leaving residents to survive by sheltering with neighbors under extreme conditions.
- Many lost everything, and government compensation is limited, while decades of poor urban planning raise doubts about Hat Yai’s ability to withstand future extreme weather events under a changing climate.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
HAT YAI, Thailand — Largely forgotten by the public, politicians and the media, the flood crisis that Hat Yai, the largest city in the south of Thailand, experienced in November 2025 is far from over. The waters have receded, but the recovery has only just begun.
That the flood occurred should not have come as a surprise. Hat Yai has experienced devastating floods before, particularly in 2000 and 2010. The south of Thailand experiences seasonal heavy rainfall events, but with this being a La Niña year, additionally heavy rainfall was widely predicted.
This time the flood came in two waves, with three-day accumulated rainfall reaching 630 millimeters (nearly 25 inches). On the morning of Nov. 21, it appeared the worst was over. According to Khun Nit, a 70-year-old resident of the low-lying Khet 8 area of Hat Yai, the streets were flooded just below knee level, but this appeared to be the full extent of the flooding. He was out in the street in front of his house posing and taking photos with his wife standing in the water, all smiles. This level of flooding is not uncommon, and while certainly a major inconvenience, nothing out of the ordinary.
By the early hours of Nov. 22, heavy rain had begun to fall again, and through to the next day the floodwaters rapidly rose. At the same time, the news coming from the local government was that everything would be fine. The nearby warning system of color-coded flags on a bridge in front of the local district offices remained at green, and it was generally assumed there was no need for concern, and no need to move possessions to higher floors or other safe areas.
“If we’d had warning I would have moved my possessions, but the flag stayed green,” a middle-aged man who lived near the early-warning system told me.
A young man selling barbecued food on the street said his father in a province near the Malaysian border had told him to evacuate, but he felt confident in the local government advice that the city would be fine and decided to stay.
Within a matter of hours, the floodwaters rose dramatically, forcing people to rush to safety. Across the city, the water reached a story high, about 3-4 meters (10-13 feet), while in some low-lying areas it reached 8 m (26 ft).
Khun Nit and 14 other people moved to a neighbor’s two-story house, not realizing this would be their shared home for the next six nights. Everyone we spoke to had similar experiences. For those in single-story houses, including a single father of two young children, there was a desperate scramble just to get out of the house in time — escaping by forcing a hole in the tiled roof of his rented house, taking only the clothes on their backs and camping out with 30 others on the second floor. Neighbors, friends and family became the only source of relief, escape and shelter.
Flooding knocked out the electricity and phone services. The current of the huge volume of water, sweeping cars, motorbikes and all kinds of rubbish, was impossible to navigate, and with no means of communicating with the outside world, people were left completely to their own devices, not knowing how long it would last or how long they would be on their own.
People sheltered and waited. The inability of rescue services to reach people in these heavily inundated, lower-lying areas has been widely reported. Many of the rescuers came from outside Hat Yai, but even for locals, navigation must have been difficult, with many reference points underwater. The strong currents made it additionally difficult to navigate. Fortunately, for many in the shared spaces of neighbors’ and friends’ higher floors, there was also access to gas stoves for cooking, though meals consisted almost entirely of instant noodles. Collecting rainwater gave them access to drinking water. But there were no working toilets, so they had to defecate in plastic bags that they then threw into the water, or did so directly in the water. Inevitably, the water, thick and muddy, also stank.
The scale of loss is difficult to comprehend. Many people lost absolutely everything: all of their possessions, clothes, household electrical goods, fridges, TVs. Cars and motorbikes that most people buy paid on credit and are essential for their livelihoods were submerged. Those who were lucky enough or could afford first-class comprehensive insurance will get compensation, but the process is slow. And for those who had not completed payments, the compensation will not be enough. The single father spent 30,000 baht ($950) repairing his car — a whole month’s salary. His children lost all their possessions: toys, schoolbooks and clothes.
The government has provided compensation of 9,000 baht ($285) for each household. But only registered residents are eligible. With all documentation also lost in the flood, for many accessing compensation meant going to the village headman to get a letter of support.
Alongside this intense loss, the city is gradually trying to recover, reinvesting and borrowing money to repair houses and shops. What cannot be salvaged is piled up on the street to be taken to the dumps and then to the landfill sites. With all the rubbish mixed together, the longer-term environmental and public health consequences of such waste disposal can only be guessed at. Cleaning his wooden benches, Khun Wichit remained remarkably cheerful, and in line with a common sentiment, considered himself one of the lucky ones, very much aware that others were far worse off.
The recovery is hard, both financially and emotionally. Khun Nimit has lived in Hat Yai for 30 years and runs a seamstress and laundry business. She lost everything in the flood: all her personal belongings as well as her stock, shop fridges and six washing machines. She has managed to replace the washing machines and fridges — a huge investment and also a risk, very much aware that another flood in the near future is a strong possibility. Further down the road, another shopkeeper who had only recently returned from Bangkok to live in Hat Yai told me that she had also lost everything. And while she had managed to restock the basic drinks and snacks for her shop, the stress was clear on her face and in her voice. “I can’t go through this again,” she said.
Khun Adi is the third-generation owner of a Chinese pharmacy that has been in Hat Yai for more than 80 years. The flood had destroyed all his stock, leaving him to clean up gradually, painstakingly removing all the storage drawers that are characteristic of traditional Chinese pharmacies, washing them twice, drying them with an electric fan and then disinfecting them. With still a long way to go, he said he’s also conflicted about whether it’s worth continuing. At 60 years old, he said he’s not sure but also feels that he doesn’t want to end a family legacy in this way.
Some stock is more easily salvaged than others. Shops selling spare parts for cars, anything that could be cleaned and used was being sorted, piled into large plastic crates and hosed down in the street, and then put out to dry on plastic sheets by the side of the road. For Khun Banyat, this was a lengthy process that he was taking slowly. Surrounded by shelves to the ceiling, just below the floodwater mark, that he hadn’t even touched yet, it would all take time. Whether it was all worth it was not clear, but this is a situation that provides few options.
A shop selling electrical goods had most of the stock destroyed, with the fixtures and fittings also rotting. It had been hit both by floodwaters up to the ceiling of the first floor, and then a short circuit sparked a fire that finished off the upper floors. Even so, Khun Orwae, standing on rotten wood and cardboard boxes, was very carefully and slowly sorting through any remaining stock looking for anything that could be saved.
As individuals across the city wonder whether recovery is possible or viable, these are questions that the city of Hat Yai must also confront. Decades of poorly planned urban expansion have filled the floodplain and blocked natural flow, ignoring both expert advice and the blindingly obvious. The wider Hat Yai urban region covers around 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles), incorporating five municipalities with ambitions of becoming the second-largest metropolitan region in the country after Bangkok. There are difficult questions as to the extent that recovery is possible, and how viable the city might be if the future holds more frequent and intensive flooding events.
Banner image: Khun Orwae sorts through the remaining stock in the electrical goods shop where he works. Most of the stock was ruined after being inundated in up to 4 m (13 ft) of water. An electrical short circuit then caused a fire that destroyed much of the upper floors of the building. Image by Richard Friend for Mongabay.
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