Typhoon kills 15 in Vietnam, 12,000 homeless
TUY HOA - Typhoon Lingling killed at least 16
people, injured dozens and left more than 12,000 homeless in central
Vietnam on Monday after killing hundreds in the Philippines last week,
officials said.
Making landfall in Vietnam early on Monday, Lingling brought winds
gusting up to Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale, or 83 miles per hour, and
torrential rain to seven provinces from Quang Tri to Khanh Hoa, 312
miles to the south.
Disaster management officials said the typhoon flattened 2,456 houses
-- homes to more than 12,000 people -- and damaged 3,281 others. At
least 167 docked fishing vessels were damaged or sunk.
Officials said 13 people died in Phu Yen province, two in Binh Dinh and
one in Quang Ngai.
A 16-year-old boy was electrocuted in Quang Ngai after Lingling tore
through power lines and a three-year-old child was killed in a collapsed
house in Binh Dinh.
At total of 76 people were reported injured.
Meteorologists said the typhoon weakened to a tropical low pressure
system after making landfall but torrential rain swelled some rivers to
danger levels, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of families.
Officials in Binh Dinh province said thousands of trees had been
uprooted and 74 fishing boats damaged or sunk.
A Reuters Video News cameraman saw dozens of big trees uprooted
on north-south Highway One running through Phu Yen and in its capital
Tuy Hoa, about 250 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.
Three hours of terror
Le Anh Tuan, a 40-year-old Tuy Hoa resident, said the typhoon took
about three hours to pass over his house. ``My wife, my children and I
had to hide here. We didn't dare go out,'' he said.
A disaster official in Quang Ngai said about 400 families were
evacuated on Sunday from low-lying areas around Tuy Hoa.
Lingling was the first typhoon to hit central Vietnam this year, although
last month a tropical low pressure system brought torrential rains and
floods to eight central provinces, killing at least 44 people.
Meteorologists said Lingling moved west across toward northern
Cambodia and southern Laos at about 10 miles an hour.
An exporter in the key coffee-growing province of Daklak in Vietnam's
Central Highlands bordering Cambodia said rains had disrupted the
harvest but no damage to coffee trees had been reported.
The official in Quang Ngai said rains would swell rivers there to danger
levels by late Monday, at which low-lying land would be submerged and
dykes threatened by collapse.
A meteorologist said Lingling could bring more rain to upstream parts of
the Mekong River in Cambodia and the lower parts of Laos.
He said a swelling of the Mekong River upstream could slow the
receding of floodwaters downstream in the rice-growing Mekong Delta
which have killed at least 366 people since August, 286 of them
children, but done only slight damage to crops.
Flash floods and landslides in Vietnam's central region in October and
November 1999 killed more than 730 people.
Lingling left a trail of death and destruction in the Philippines last week,
with at least 270 people believed killed, including 226 who drowned or
were buried under mud.
Reuters - November 12, 2001.
|