Killer storm strengthens as it heads for Vietnam
HANOI - Tropical storm Lingling strengthened overnight and was on track toward central
Vietnam on Saturday after killing nearly 360 people in the Philippines, a Vietnamese meteorologist
said. The official at the National Center for Hydro Meteorology told Reuters Lingling's wind speed had
now risen to Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale, or 83 miles per hour, a speed capable of causing
extreme damage and sinking large ships.
``But the storm is still too far from the land to forecast any damage,'' she said.
On Friday, another meteorologist at the same center said Lingling could turn into a strong typhoon but
could weaken before it made landfall in central Vietnam on Monday.
The government has ordered authorities in Vietnam's coastal provinces to ban fishing boats from sailing
and to signal those offshore to return.
A national weather center report released at 2030 GMT on Friday said the storm was moving near the
northern part of the Spratly Islands and would travel west northwest in the next 24 hours toward
central Vietnam at up to 20 km (12 miles) per hour.
The Spratlys are about 250 nautical miles east of Vietnam's Cam Ranh district, the closest point on the
Vietnamese coast.
The report said the strong wind, combined with a cold spell in the Tonkin Gulf would cause the sea to
swell strongly.
Lingling left a trail of death and destruction in the Philippines with at least 130 bodies so far recovered
and 229 people buried under a mudslide and presumed dead.
Floods since August have swamped Vietnam's southern rice growing region, the Mekong Delta, killing
at least 363 people, 284 of them children.
A tropical low pressure system brought torrential rain and floods to the central region last month, killing
at least 44 people in eight provinces.
Lingling is expected to bring heavy rain to Vietnam's Central Highlands bordering Cambodia and Laos,
where harvesting of a new coffee crop has just started to pick up.
Natural disasters in the central region killed more than 730 people in 1999.
Reuters - November 9, 2001.
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