Perhaps the most enduring image I have of the great Bangkok flood of 2011 is an encounter our film crew had with a 93-year-old woman during the height of the catastrophe. Our team had travelled just north of Bangkok to one of the hardest hit areas of the flood. We were accompanying a relief team from Thai television Channel 3, and it was late in the afternoon.
All day long the volunteers had brought in supplies of fresh food and water to people trapped in their submerged homes. But as we neared the end of this day’s operation, an aged woman all alone paddled up to our motorboat. She was in an old Thai wooden boat, dressed colourfully in purple and blue and wearing a traditional large brimmed Thai hat to ward off the searing sun. After more than a month of floodwater covering her home and the homes of others, she still had the vigour and strength to contend with the crisis.
The 93-year-old woman in her boat.
At that moment, I realised she symbolised everything that was good about the Thai people who were living with this catastrophe. Her spirit unbroken, she had endured and come to terms with the hardship of the conditions she faced. And because of her age, I also realised that her life spanned two of the greatest calamities ever to hit Thailand: these floods of 2011 and the equally massive flooding of 1942, when she would not yet have been twenty years old. Age had not only brought this woman wisdom but strength and the knowledge of how to survive great tragedy.
Thailand is a country of exotic splendour. Its dense forests, thriving jungles, dazzling temples, and mysterious ruins and palaces vie with its modern resorts, beachfronts, and shopping centres as a magnet for tourists from across the globe. This is the Thailand I know and love. It’s the country I now call home, a place where sudden catastrophes such as tornadoes, hail storms, and even earthquakes are almost unknown.
A pregnant woman walking across roof in order to reach food.
Catastrophic floods
Even the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, while it killed many more than this flood has, did not match the widespread property loss caused by this year’s flood. Over two million people were directly affected. An area the third of the size of Texas went under water. Businesses disappeared. Jobs were lost. Lives destroyed. The suicide rate has increased dramatically. For several months, hundreds of thousands of people either lived in homes where the water forced them to survive on their second floors or they had to take refuge in sparsely outfitted evacuation centres. Some just had to build makeshift camps to survive. Too often, their only company was a stray crocodile, a cobra seeking dry land, or a giant python forced out of its watery fields.
News in 3D
Due to the frenetic shooting schedules that had kept me travelling all across Asia, Thailand had become a short stop to repack and get fresh hard drives. It wasn’t until I was jetting home from the Eagle Festival in Western Mongolia that the enormity of these floods hit home. Thailand has a monsoon season and some flooding happens every year. But not like this. I sat in the comfort of first class on Thai Airways reading the Bangkok Post and looking at surreal pictures of the temples of Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand, now flooded with 3 metres or more of water. These irreplaceable treasures of the past are UNESCO World Heritage sites, and I had just shot them in 3D last year as part of a joint project between Mahidol University and UNESCO. Now the 3D video may be all that is left of these magnificent structures of the past.
I am used to scripted and documentary shooting, but now I was taking 3D into the news arena. But what better way to bring home the reality of this disaster than in 3D?
Equipment planning
The first challenge was how to bring the 3D equipment down to a manageable amount. Weight and size would be an issue. The crew would be heading into many unknowns, crammed into relief vehicles, small boats and who knows what else. Even some of the smallest two-camera beam splitter rigs would be too big. And with the vibration from the motion of the vehicles and boat engines would yield useless 3D.
The only logical choice was the Panasonic AG-3DA1. It had to be kitted out with just the necessities. The RedRock Micro microMattebox to allow for the use of ND filters to combat the harsh glare off the water. The Convergent Design nanoFlash 3D was used to record at higher bit-rates. The VariZoom VZPFI one-handed controller for easy operator control. These were all absolute ‘must haves’.
In the hardest-to-reach areas, I needed a really simple 3D camera. The Sony HDR-TD10E camcorder offered compact size, point and shoot ease and close convergence capabilities, all with reasonable quality.
The crew
The crew consisted of myself, my wife, Sompao (Bee) Caudullo, fellow lecturer and renowned Thai cinematographer, Dorn Ratanathatsanee and Program Director of Mahidol University Fine and Applied Arts Entertainment Media Program, Dr Paul Cornelius. Paul himself was a victim of the flood and had to evacuate from his water-filled home by boat.
Dorn Ratanathatsanee shooting with the Panasonic AG-3DA1.
Challenges
The limited response of the government, which was caught off guard, did not help matters much. Only when the Royal Thai Army and Royal Thai Navy stepped in did effective food relief begin to materialise. Otherwise, most help came from public-spirited corporations and Non-Governmental Organisations providing volunteers and relief work.
The people who did the most to help, however, were the victims of the flood themselves. I saw this with my own eyes as our camera crew spent hours getting to the edge of the flood zone. With water already knee-deep on the streets, only large trucks could get through. Villages and local officials organised things themselves, creating evacuation centres overnight, furnishing people with medical care, food, water, and most of all, hope. For example, when we got to an area called Lamlukka, we met a mayor, a school teacher and a nurse who worked around the clock every day for at least two months making sure everyone in their community survived.
Me and Paul in the back of a converted garbage truck.
Read more at 3Droundabout.com.
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