The death toll in the wake of Typhoon Damrey has risen to at least 49, with 27 people still missing and rain continuing in one of Vietnam’s worst natural disasters in recent memory, authorities said on Monday.
Khanh Hoa province, home of the popular beach resort city Nha Trang, reported 23 dead, Vietnam’s National Committee for Search and Rescue said in a report to the government.
Typhoon Damrey made landfall on Saturday with winds of up to 135 kilometres per hour, the Central Steering Committee for Disaster Prevention and Control said on Monday.
“We are facing possibly the worst-ever peril,” Nguyen Cuong, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said on Sunday at an emergency meeting.
Regional rainfall of up to 1,479 millimetres has been recorded in the past week, and many urban centres were flooded with as much as 1.5 metres of water, leaving some neighbourhoods totally isolated.
Hoi An, with its centuries-old Ancient Town district, has been badly hit, leaving thousands of tourists stuck.
Hue, the old imperial capital, was also flooded.
With heavy rain continuing through Monday, local reservoirs were nearly full and at risk of bursting, authorities warned.
The storm destroyed about 23,000 houses and damaged 40,000 others, knocked down power lines and uprooted trees.
Ten cargo ships and nearly 1,300 fishing boats have sunk.
Damrey arrived days before a global foreign leaders’ summit for next week’s APEC conference in Da Nang, where weather authorities said there was a risk of flooding and landslides.
U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to arrive on Friday for the leaders’ summit, which Chinese President, Xi Jinping and Russian President, Vladimir Putin are also expected to attend.(dpa/NAN)
