Submerged: A file photo of man paddling a boat in the flood in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi in An Lac village, Hanoi. Large swathes of the country’s north were already devastated by flooding after Yagi hit earlier this month. — AP
SERIOUS flooding in the country’s central region has killed three people and forced more than 10,000 residents to evacuate their homes, disaster officials said.
Earlier this month large swathes of the country’s north were devastated by flooding in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which left nearly 300 people dead and caused an estimated US$1.6bil (RM6.7bil) worth of damage.
But as Yagi floodwaters began to recede in the north, central Vietnam was last week struck by another severe storm which brought heavy rain and sent river levels dangerously high.
Disaster management officials in Thanh Hoa province said yesterday that over the past three days more than 11,700 people had left their homes – many of them partially submerged – for higher ground.
In neighbouring Nghe An province, three people were reported dead after being swept away in flashfloods.
Since Saturday, around 320 houses have been damaged while more than 6,300ha of crops were destroyed, the ministry of agriculture said, adding that at least 40 school buildings in the area were flooded or damaged.
In northern Thailand, flash floods triggered by heavy rain have killed two people in Lampang province and affected 1,500 households, the kingdom’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said yesterday. Authorities have also urged people living along the swollen River Wang to move to safety.
Myanmar and Laos were also badly hit by Typhoon Yagi.
Nearly 1,000 schools across Vietnam and Thailand have been damaged since early September, forcing children out of classes, according to Save the Children.
Some homes on the outskirts of the capital Hanoi remain partly under water two and half weeks after Yagi hit, and farmers are still battling with the aftermath of flooded fields.
Rice farmers could be seen yesterday harvesting their crop weeks earlier than usual, trying to save anything that had not yet been destroyed.
“We lost almost all our crops. We cut the rice today in a hope to save as much as we could,” said 60-year-old Dinh Thi Thu. — AFP
