Red Cross rushes aid to Vietnam

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

Red Cross rushes aid to Vietnam

HANOI - The Red Cross is rushing emergency rice supplies and life belts to families running short of food in Vietnam's flood-devastated Mekong Delta, where dozens of children are dying each day, the agency said on Friday. Officials in the stricken southern zone, where the floods have spread to eight provinces, said the death toll in the past month has reached 296, including 225 children.

"We're looking at 20-30 kids dying a day - it's crazy," said John Geoghegan, chief delegate of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "There should be something that can be done. We're trying to get people out delivering life belts to remote areas." The worst floods for decades from the swollen Mekong River have turned huge areas of the low-lying Delta into inland seas. At the other end of Vietnam on Tuesday, a flash flood killed 40 members of a minority tribe and injured 17 in a mountain village in Lai Chau province, which borders China and Laos.

And in another northern province, Bac Kan, at least one child died and six others were reported missing after a bridge collapsed in torrential rains on Thursday.

Rice For Hungry Families
Geoghegan said the Red Cross would also start a rice hand-out for 38 000 families next week. "Our knowledge is that people are not suffering from severe malnutrition as yet, but people are short of food and I wouldn't be surprised if certain families are running very, very short. "We're getting the assistance out to as many people as we can now. Our heads are down and we are rushing forward with the distribution," he said.

In all, the homes of about four million people have been flooded, some up to the rafters. The official Vietnam News Agency said 200 000 people had been evacuated from their homes and 500 000 were in need of emergency relief. Most evacuees have lived for weeks in cramped, dirty conditions atop crumbling earth dykes or raised roadways. Flood waters have receded steadily in the upstream Delta in the past week, but it is likely to be late November before they subside fully and evacuees can return home.

Local officials warn high sea tides next week are likely to prevent drainage out to sea, thus increasing water levels in downstream provinces. They also said a tropical low pressure area might bring more rains in coming days.

By David Brunnstrom - Reuters - October 6, 2000.

Vietnam's biggest city braces for new flood threat

HANOI - The Vietnamese authorities are preparing to deal with a new threat to the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City from the flooding in the Mekong Delta, relief officials said Friday. Water levels on the city's western outskirts are expected to rise over the next 10 days after torrential rains upstream in the Vam Co Dong valley, the assistant director of the regional disaster relief centre, Do Ngoc Thien, told AFP.

With spring tides expected to compound the flooding, the authorities have ordered hydroelectric plants north of the city to shut down and release no further water from their reservoirs, he said. On Tuesday Ho Chi Minh City went on high alert as the huge inland sea created by the swollen Mekong engulfed the Vam Co Dong river system to its north, swamping 70 percent of farmland in Binh Chanh district just beyond the city limits. The waters in Binh Chanh have since receded by around two centimetres (an inch) a day although the flooding has spread to Cu Chi district to its north.

Water levels in the delta provinces of Tien Giang, Can Tho and Vinh Long are also expected to rise again with the approach of the spring tides, Thien said. A total of 298 people, 226 of them children, have now been confirmed dead in the floods, the worst to hit the Mekong Delta in nearly 40 years, the disaster relief centre said Friday.

Agence France Presse - October 6, 2000.