Severe floods had left 21 dead and missing in the central provinces as
of Oct. 17 while a tropical storm is forecast to hit East Sea on
Oct. 18.
Most of the victims were swept away in flash floods
while travelling in Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh and Thua Thien-Hue
provinces, reported local authorities.
“The swift current and
an immense sea of water on large area make it difficult for us to
search for the missing,” said Nguyen Hong Ha, a local from Nghe An
province’s Nghi Trung commune.
On Oct. 17, Prime
Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked the Finance Ministry to immediately
provide 100 million VND each to Quang Binh and Ha Tinh provinces
following Deputy PM Hoang Trung Hai’s decision.
The PM
also requested that the National Reserves Department allocate 1,000
tonnes of rice to each of the two provinces for timely restoration of
the aftermaths of the floods.
A working group of
the National Steering Committee for Flood and Storm Control on Oct. 16
made a tour of Ha Tinh province to provide guidance on coping with the
natural disasters.
Vietnam News Agency correspondents in the central provinces reported that waters continued to rise in these localities.
The three consecutive days of torrential rains that ended on Oct. 16
also flooded thousands houses in these provinces for the second time
since the beginning of October, said the Flood and Storm Control
Steering Committee.
In Quang Binh alone, 10,000
families were evacuated to safe places and some 40,000 houses remained
flooded, nearly half of which were 1.5-2m deep in water, said the
provincial People’s Committee Chairman Nguyen Huu Hoai.
Heavy rains and flooding also blocked road and railway transport,
isolating more than 100,000 houses in Ha Tinh province after its Mo and
Khe Mung hydro-power dams were broken.
“Rain has resulted in
landslides leaving 25 areas under thousands of cubic metres of soil and
rocks and blocking transport on National Highway 8A,” said Nguyen Truong
Tuong, director of 474 Road Management and Repair Company.
National Highway 1A was also 1m deep in water and many provincial
roads remained many metres under water, preventing rescue team from
reaching flooded house.
The north-south railway was suspended
between Nghe An’s Vinh station and Quang Binh’s Dong Hoi station after
many parts of the rails were washed away in the floods, said Nguyen Huu
Tuyen, head of the Vietnam Railway’s Transport Business Department.
He couldn’t say when the section could reopen but workers would start fixing the rails as soon as water subsided.
Three
north-south trains were cancelled on Oct. 17 while some 3,000
passengers who were stranded at those two stations on Oct. 16 continued
their journey by bus.
Meanwhile, the National Centre for
Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting says storm Megi, the incoming tropical
that formed in the Philippines, is travelling west at 20kph and is
predicted to be 300km east of Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago by the
morning of Oct. 20.
The previous floods in early October killed 66 people in the centre of Vietnam./.
