Vietnam Flood Toll Hits 357, Rains Loom
HANOI - Raging floods have killed 357 people in
central coastal Vietnam, and the death toll and suffering is
expected to increase with more rains forecast for the stricken
region late Friday.
Officials said several days of flooding -- the region's worst in 100
years -- had left huge numbers of people hungry in seven
provinces that stretch for some 350 miles.
Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem, speaking to Vietnam
Television from the former imperial capital Hue, said 900,000
people in the province of Thua Thien-Hue alone were living in the
open and had eaten no rice in three days.
The province and its capital Hue have borne the brunt of the
floods, with a total 230 people dead.
Officials said diarrhea and fever had broken out in two other
provinces, where rescue workers were struggling to distribute
food and medicines because of continuous rains.
A weather bulletin aired on VTV had only more bad news.
It said rain from a low pressure system was on course to strike a
large swathe of Vietnam, including the central coastal region and
the central highlands to the south, where harvesting of the
country's lucrative coffee crop is about to peak.
Rains from that system would strike either late Friday or Saturday
and last for days, VTV said.
Foreign relief officials said Vietnam was doing everything it could
to get food into the worst affected areas.
Giant Soviet-made lorries laden with noodles and biscuits had left
northern Vietnam and were passing through drier provinces of
neighboring Laos before trying to push through floodwaters and
reach distribution centers.
EMERGENCY STOCKPILES OF RICE TO BE SENT
Prime Minister Phan Van Khai ordered that 8,400 tonnes of rice
from emergency stockpiles be dispatched immediately, while in
cities across the country, residents were coming forward with
cash, food and clothing.
The army, which has played a major role in the rescue operations,
had repaired and reopened parts of the national north-south
Highway One, VTV said.
But river levels were still high and aerial shots showed large tracts
of land blanketed in water.
Officials expressed fears that disease would spread among those
who had fled to the hills but were now living without shelter
among chickens, pigs and other livestock.
John Geoghegan, head of delegation for the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Vietnam,
said relief efforts would have to be quick.
``It's going to close up again. The weather forecasts are pretty
poor,'' he told Reuters earlier Friday.
The Red Cross was expected to launch an appeal later Friday in
Geneva for an initial $3 million in aid.
A Thai C-130 transport plane landed in Danang late Friday with
emergency supplies and to pick up a group of Thai travel and
airline officials who had been stranded in Hue.
The affected region includes some of Vietnam's best tourist spots,
from ancient Hue to the pure white sands of China Beach in
Danang, a favored playground of American GIs during the
Vietnam War, and the centuries-old trading port of Hoi An.
Vietnam is a long narrow coastal country that regularly gets hit by
floods and typhoons.
But the poorer center fares the worst, partly because logging has
cleared large tracts of land. There have been no recent estimates
for material damage from the current floods.
Reuters - November 5, 1999.
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