Floods again batter central Vietnam, seven dead
HANOI - Heavy floods battered large
swathes of central coastal Vietnam on Saturday, just a month
after the region's worst floods in a century killed nearly 600
people, officials and state media said.
Officials and Vietnam Television (VTV) said torrential rains in
recent days had triggered floods across six provinces that had
killed at least seven people.
Parts of the former imperial capital Hue were again under water,
while the north-south national Highway One had been blocked
in many places, officials said.
Hue bore the brunt of last month's floods, which caused damage
of $250 million and set back the region's development by years.
VTV, in an early morning broadcast, said the current floods in
some of the provinces might be worse than last month.
However, a senior weather official in Hanoi said floods and river
levels had already peaked in some areas. He added that rain
might lash the region for another two days, but that there were
no threatening weather systems offshore.
Military personnel have been mobilised across parts of the
affected area, which stretches 600 km (375 miles) from Thua
Thien-Hue province to Khanh Hoa province.
VTV broadcast pictures from some provinces that showed large
areas blanketed with water.
It said many people had been evacuated, while rice fields just
replanted had again been damaged.
Central Vietnam is the country's poorest region and does not
make a major contribution to economic growth. Essential
industry and agriculture are located mainly in the south.
It was unclear if heavy rains were also lashing coffee plantations
nearby in the central highlands. Harvesting of the current crop
has peaked but farmers are now drying beans, a process
traditionally carried out in the open.
On Friday, coffee traders in the central highlands said the
weather was fine.
Floods and typhoons regularly lash the coastal nation, home to
79 million people.
Reuters - December 3, 1999.
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