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

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Vietnam Rushes Emergency Aid To Flooded Mekong Delta HANOI - The government rushed emergency aid to the flooded Mekong Delta as rescuers spread out Wednesday to evacuate about 65,000 people, government officials said. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who is touring the disaster areas, has pledged 32 billion dong ($1=VND14,126) in government aid to four provinces. Two of the provinces, An Giang and Dong Thap, have declared a state of emergency. The first batch of food and water was sent out of a military base in Ho Chi Minh city, newspapers reported. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued a preliminary appeal for $350,000 in aid for victims of the floods and a tropical storm in central Vietnam over the weekend. "The situation is looking a lot worse," said John Geoghegan, head of IFRCRCS in Vietnam. He was speaking by phone as he toured An Giang province by boat delivering rice. "We visited 400 families sitting on the dikes as the rising water just ate it away. You could see it crumbling away before your eyes," he said. Money has been allotted for emergency food, water and plastic sheeting, he said. The provinces are bracing for worsening floods as water levels rise along the Mekong Delta, said Bui Dat Tram, director of An Giang weather forecast station. Levels will remain high through early October, he said. Nearly 40,000 people from the provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap and Long An have already been evacuated to higher ground as water levels at the two tributaries of the Mekong river reached the levels of the 1996 floods that killed more than 150 people. In Dong Thap province, nearly 15,000 people have been moved from flooded homes, while another 30,000 are in the process of being evacuated, provincial deputy governor Truong Ngoc Han said. In neighboring Long An province, 15,000 people have been evacuated and more than 35,000 are being moved from their homes, the provincial floods and storms control bureau said Wednesday. In An Giang province, more than 8,000 people have been evacuated. Early seasonal flooding, which began in July, has killed four people so far in Dong Thap province, Han said. He attributed the low death toll to the government's efforts in recent years to fight seasonal floods by giving farmers loans to raise their houses' foundation, constructing and reinforcing the dike system and building a canal system to discharge flood waters to the Gulf of Thailand. More than 700 people were killed in two bouts of floods that hit the central region late last year. Associated Press - September 13, 2000.

Five die, 30,000 evacuated in Vietnam HANOI - Rising flood waters in Vietnam's Mekong Delta have killed at least five people and forced 30,000 to flee their homes while another 170,000 may need to be evacuated in coming days, officials said on Tuesday. "We have declared a state of emergency in the province," said Vuong Binh Thanh of the anti-flood committee in An Giang, bordering Cambodia. Officials in An Giang and two neighbouring provinces, Dong Thap and Long An, said water levels in the next few days were expected to match those seen in Delta floods in 1996. Floods that year killed 180 people, submerged or damaged nearly 800,000 houses and required emergency relief for tens of thousands of people. Meteorologists say continuous heavy rains in the upstream and midstream area of the Mekong River have caused water levels to rise quickly in the downstream southern Vietnam. An official of the Dong Thap provincial anti-flood committee said damage to infrastructure, including bridges and a highway under construction, could be worse than in 1996. He said four bridges had already been destroyed. The floods have so far killed at least five people and caused more than 300 billion dong ($21.2 million) of damage in the three provinces, the officials said. One person was killed in a house collapse in An Giang and the four others when their boat sank in Dong Thap. Officials said nearly 30,000 people had been forced to evacuate their homes and a further 170,000 may need to be evacuated in coming days. In An Giang and Dong Thap, more than 50,000 school children were unable to attend classes. The officials said there were fears water levels could match those in 1961, when they hit 5.6 metres (16 feet). They were currently near five metres (15 feet). While the floods raise the prospect of further loss of life and damage to infrastructure, local officials said impact on rice production would be slight since the current harvest was almost complete. They said a combined area of 24,000 hectares of the summer-autumn crop was destroyed in all three provinces. The International Red Cross in Vietnam made a preliminary international appeal on Monday for nearly $350,000 to help both people left homeless by a tropical storm that struck at the weekend and in anticipation of more problems in the Delta. Tropical storm Wukong killed two people, injured 69, and left thousands homeless when it tore through the north central provinces of Quang Binh, Ha Tinh and Nghe An on Sunday. 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 13, 2000.