Two men were crushed to death when tractor-trailer truck overturned in Suphanburi province in central Thailand yesterday. Horrific CCTV footage showed the moment the truck, carrying animal feed, overturned, crushing the two, who were travelling on a motorcycle with a sidecar.

The deceased were identified as 64 year old Montha and 56 year old Phra Manop, a monk at the nearby Wat Nong Wan Priang temple. They were returning to the temple on Route 321 after the monk completed his alms.

The driver of the truck, 29 year old Chainarong, was taken to hospital.

Police and rescue services used two cranes to lift the overturned truck. Rescue services had the grisly job of removing the victims’ bodies, which had suffered horrendous injuries.

Sanook reports that Chainarong was trying to avoid a collision after another truck in front braked suddenly, but lost control, resulting in the deaths of the two victims. Local media say the location is an accident blackspot.

WARNING: This video may be disturbing to some viewers; discretion is advised.
Click HERE to watch the video of the incident.

SOURCES: thaivisa | Sanook

A 30 year old Danish man is dead after his parachute failed to open in central Thailand on Saturday. The incident occurred at a jump site in the Sri Racha district of Chon Buri province. Police were alerted at 12:30pm.

The 30-year-old Danish national, Stefan Eiriksson Andersen, was found lying face-up and unconscious, blood coming from his mouth and nose. His left leg was also broken, Thai media reported.

He was taken to Phayathai Sriracha Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Witnesses told police that the man had come to the airfield to participate in a parachute jump. Staff had checked the equipment before the man boarded a small plane, but he plunged to the ground when his chute failed to open.

Police are investigating to find out the exact cause of the fatal incident.

SOURCE: Chiang Rai Times |

“Unhealthy”. That about sums up the air Bangkokians are breathing this morning, a situation almost completely avoidable but allowed to continue by the Thai Government. Bangkok is in bad company today with other polluted cities in Asia – Lahore, Hanoi, Delhi and Dhaka – as the fifth most polluted city in the world, a headline the Thai Government would prefer to avoid.

Right around the capital this morning, a day of the quietest traffic, and stretching around the central Thailand region and down to Pattaya, the smoke and haze caused by the plantation burn-offs is palpable as people try and find some respite from the poor air quality.

The northern airflows are blowing all the smoke from the field fires lit by farmers back into the city today. The city, already in a mild panic over the Coronavirus cases in Thailand, is short on masks and probably even shorted on patience as the Thai Government continues to put lives at risk by doing little about solving the smog crisis.

Let’s be clear, this has almost nothing to do with old buses and factories, and burning incense sticks (all which have been blamed in the past), and EVERYTHING to do with the annual burn-off season, mostly sugar cane, corn and rice fields.

Even the sugar industry, the source of much of the pollution, has been pro-active enough to offer solutions to encourage, or force, farmers into harvesting the crops and using machinery to prepare the paddocks for the next crops, instead of resorting to the cheap solution of burning.

Sugar factories are campaigning to cut and harvest raw sugarcane, instead of boring it first, for processing. The conglomerates are recommending that the government offer funding at low interest rates to farmers to buy harvesters as the prices of the equipment are quite high (6-12 million baht).

The Thaiger has published countless articles over the past few years about the pollution problem HERE, HERE and HERE. There’s even been a ‘crackdown’ on the plantation fires with police being given the power to prosecute farmers who continue to light the fires.

“National Police chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda has ordered deputy chief Pol General Suwat Jaengyodsuk to be the central administrator of these measures. They are to be enforced at traffic routes, industrial factories, construction sites and burnt crop fields where the PM2.5 comes from nationwide.”

But here we are, on a Sunday, in one of the world’s most visited cities by tourists from around the world, enveloped in choking pollution that measures up to 4 times the Thai Government’s own classification of a safe upper limit. And up to 8 times what the World Health Organisation deems as ‘safe’.

If the map readings of Unhealthy and Very Unhealthy aren’t enough to scare a Thai Government public servant into action this morning, perhaps they should just look out of their windows at the pall of smoke descending on the city. Or perhaps they should go and greet some arriving visitors at the country’s largest international port, Suvarnabhumi Airport, where this morning’s reading is 205 microns (of 2.5 micron particulate per cubic metre of air).

Welcome to Bangkok.

PS. If the police need any help to find where the fires are burning, 1) look for the smoke or 2) log onto the NASA satellite fire map HERE (screenshot below) for some live data about fires burning around Thailand. Hundreds and hundreds of fires.

Maps courtesy of AirVisual