Last Thursday (July 9th), I went with my husband and we met with the family representatives for the fire victims when they held a meeting at the site of the fire disaster which destroyed their homes on May 2nd.

There were about 10 representative people there of the remaining families that are seeking to re-establish new permanent homes for themselves. A representative for the local Municipality was expected to be in attendance but nobody showed up. Previously, the Municipality have been very supportive and provided assistance where they could, including financial assistance and emergency funds. At this stage, no permission has been given for the victims to be able to rebuild on the fire damaged site. Whilst this is very discouraging and frustrating, it must be pointed out that it's a complex situation that cannot be simply resolved given that the victim's homes were erected on land that did not belong to them.

When we interviewed the group spokesperson, she said that there we're now 12 families remaining within their group who were actively seeking new permanent homes. That indicated that in fact 6 families had left the group since our last visit just 5 weeks earlier. Understandably, they had simply given up hope of being able to rebuild on the site of their previous homes, and had used emergency relief funds from the government given as an compensatory allowance, and also from some donated funds to try their best to restart their lives from scratch. The amounts they received were in the vicinity of 34,000 baht (about $1,000USD) which is about 5% of what they'd need to rebuild.

You can see from the videos I uploaded that all the members of the group whilst appearing tired of the entire ordeal, still managed to show amazing resilience and were even able to smile and show a brave face in the hope that something really positive might prevail for them.

As more time passes, it seems that the group members are starting to resign themselves to the fact that they might never be allowed to rebuild on the original site. Whilst it is possible, there's certainly no guarantee, and in fact there seems to be an ominous feeling that it's looking less likely that it will happen. With that in mind, they're no looking at the proposition of having to find an alternative building site location, which would of course need to be far away from the city in order for such a site of 3 Rai (3200m2) to be affordable. Until such a time as the building land is secured one way or another, they cannot know just how much they'll need to raise for the rehousing project. It will at least be in the range of 4 million to 8 million baht (about $120,000 to $240,000). That's a BIG task, and one that could only be met by donated funding or some small miracle. If such funds can't be raised, then at least whatever amount is raised would then assist the families raising housing deposits which might then enable them to secure special housing loans that are made available sometimes to very low income families.

Thanks for your time and interest in reading this update. Please if you can donate to the fund in any way and show these people some compassionate support then that in itself would mean the world to them.

God bless you!

Pet Hall