Officials are making preparations to evacuate some 100 elephants at the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace & Royal Kraal after the Lopburi River overflowed.
As of Wednesday morning, the river rose by 30 centimetres, bursting its banks and flooding houses in tambons Koh and Suan Prik in Ayutthaya’s Muang district.
The elephant camp in Suan Prik was also affected.
Workers, volunteers and troops from the 11th Cavalry Battalion of the 4th Cavalry Regiment were racing against time to build flood levees to protect the elephant camp.
But Riangthongbat Meephan, deputy director of the camp, said the elephants might have to be moved to another tambon if the rising water overflows the levees.
He said officials would try to move the elephants to higher ground away from the river bank first. They would be evacuated to another tambon only if necessary.
Floods have already inundated fields that were used to grow grass to feed the elephants, so the camp would soon experience a food shortage, he believed.
THE NATION