~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnam warns of worst floods in 22 years

HANOI - Vietnam said flood waters in the Mekong Delta rice bowl have been rising fast and could soon reach their highest levels since disastrous floods 22 years ago. Thursday's Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan (People) quoted an urgent government telegram to authorities in the Delta, saying the floods could be on a scale similar to those seen in 1978 and 1996. The paper gave no details on flood casualties in the delta in 1978, but overall natural disasters in the country that year killed about 700 people. In 1996, flooding in the Mekong Delta killed 180 people, submerged or damaged nearly 800,000 houses, and ten of thousands of people were given emergency relief.

While the current flooding raises the prospect of more loss of life and damage to infrastructure, rice production is unlikely to be badly affected as the harvest is almost complete. Nhan Dan said fears of landslides from the swollen Tien river had already forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 households in Dong Thap province near the Cambodian border, where 15,000 people were facing food shortages. In the neighbouring southern province of Long An, more than 5,380 households, or some 16,000 people, had been evacuated. A meteorologist in An Giang province told Reuters water levels on the Tien river were 4.57 metres on Thursday morning, while those on the Hau river had reached 4.24 metres.

The two rivers are branches of the giant Mekong, which runs through An Giang province on the border with Cambodia. Meteorologists use waters levels in An Giang to forecast how the rest of the 12-province Mekong Delta will be affected. The An Giang meteorologist said water levels of the rivers were 0.37-0.74 metre higher than Alarm Level Three, which is declared when low-lying areas are submerged, river dyke systems in jeopardy and infrastructure in danger of damage. Nhan Dan said heavy rains early this month in the upstream and midstream area of the Mekong River caused water levels to rise quickly in the downstream southern Vietnam. The region was hit by early floods in July and August which damaged part of Vietnam's low quality summer-autumn rice crop. Traders estimated the total losses at around 330,000 tonnes of unhusked rice.

The US Department of Agriculture's report on Vietnamese rice released on Wednesday forecast the country would yield 31 million tonnes of unhusked rice, close to last year's level. It said this was due to bumper winter-spring crop output, one million tonnes higher than the same crop harvest in 1999. Vietnam is regularly hit by floods and typhoons during the July-October period. A typhoon and ensuing floods in the central coastal areas in early November last year killed 730 people.

Reuters - September 8, 2000.