Flash floods swept through a popular elephant sanctuary in northern Thailand on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of about 100 elephants and trapping dozens of tourists, amid urgent pleas for help.
Dramatic video and images from the Elephant Nature Park near the city of Chiang Mai showed dozens of elephants wading through belly-deep water to find safety on higher ground.
“It was the biggest evacuation we have ever done to save their lives, the water rose rapidly,” Saengduean “Lek” Chailert, founder of Elephant Nature Park, told CNN, calling the floods the most severe the park has ever experienced.
Video showed park staff who work with elephants, known as mahouts, shouting, “Go go, keep going” as they urged the huge pachyderms out of their pens and through the high floodwaters.
While many of the animals found shelter on a nearby mountain overnight Thursday, come morning, Saengduean said the danger was far from over.
“There are some animals we could not evacuate yesterday. Thirteen adult elephants are still trapped in their quarters. They are panicking,” said Saengduean.
Northern Thailand has suffered severe flooding and landslides in recent weeks due to torrential rains brought by Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, which left dozens dead as it swept across the region in mid-September.
Authorities in Chaing Mai, a popular tourist destination in Thailand, have issued alerts for potential flooding as water levels along the Ping River, which runs through the city, reach dangerous levels.
With extensive flooding around the park and waters still rising, the sanctuary’s founder said they are facing the unwelcome prospect of having to evacuate the animals a second time.
“The situation is a lot worse than yesterday,” she said, adding that she has requested urgent help from Thai authorities.
A priority is getting hold of boats so the mahouts can stay with the remaining elephants at the park to keep them calm, she said.
“We urgently need volunteers and animal cages as we must move the animals to the mountains due to the roads being completely cut off in both directions,” the park said in a post on Facebook.
About 30 foreign volunteers are also trapped at the sanctuary, including five Americans, some of whom have been working at the park for several weeks, Saengduean said.
The Elephant Nature Park is an elephant rescue and rehabilitation center in the Chiang Mai countryside that has rescued more than 200 elephants from the tourism and logging industries since its inception in the 1990s. It also runs tours and volunteering programs that allow visitors to observe the animals or help with conservation work.
Many of the elephants are blind or have physical injuries, which have hindered their ability to escape and complicated evacuation efforts.
“Among the evacuated animals, there are many sick elephants, some barely walk. We had to help them to get to the foot of the mountain. We are in desperate need for help,” Saengduean said.
As well as elephants, the park is home to about 5,000 rescued animals including dogs, cats, horses, pigs and rabbits – some of which were evacuated in recent days after authorities issued a flood warning.
Several villages in Chiang Mai’s Mae Rim district have been inundated by water from upstream runoffs, local media reported Thursday.
Elephants, Thailand’s national animal, have seen their wild population decline in recent decades due to threats from tourism, logging, poaching and human encroachment on elephant habitats.
Experts estimate the wild elephant population in Thailand has dwindled to 3,000-4,000, a decline from more than 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.
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