Twelve dead as Vietnam's Mekong Delta faces second year of record floods
HANOI -
Twelve people have been killed, 10 of them children, as floodwaters in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta hit
their second highest level in 40 years, disaster relief officials said Wednesday.
More than 18,000 homes are already under water but so far barely a fifth of the 90,000 people affected have
been moved to safety on higher ground, the officials said.
Authorities in the delta provinces of An Giang, Long An and Dong Thap have mobilised rescue teams around
the clock in a bid to prevent a repetition of last year when 407 people were killed in the region's worst flooding
since
"Ten deaths have been reported so far in the province of Dong Thap and two more in neighbouring An Giang,"
a disaster relief official told AFP.
"Water levels on the Mekong have already topped those of 1978, reaching 4.6 metres (more than 15 feet) at
Tan Chau" close to the Cambodian border.
"And they are still rising at the rate of 20 to 35 centimetres (eight to 14 inches) a day in the provinces of An
Giang, Long An and Dong Thap."
All 12 of the dead were drowned, including 10 children, whose parents had left them alone while they went off
in search of food or firewood, the official said.
The authorities are now planning a major public education initiative among parents in threatened areas in a bid
to prevent a repetition of last year's floods when young children accounted for a full 291 of the 407 killed.
Provincial authorities have called in the army to help with the rescue effort and all state employees have been
put on 24-hour call. Supplies of tents, food and medicines have been stockpiled around the region.
Canoes and small boats have also been rushed to the region to help with the evacuation effort.
Ten clinics and 106 schools have already been inundated, threatening new devastation to the region's social
infrastructure which is still reeling from a 250 million dollar damage bill from last year's floods.
"We are seriously concerned about the impact that a second year of interrupted education will have on the tens
of thousands of children in the flooded areas who should be returning from their school holidays on September
5," an official in Dong Thap province told AFP.
Authorities have also launched urgent appeals to farmers to speed up the region's autumn rice harvest, 10
percent of which still lies untouched in paddy fields in threatened areas.
Dubbed Vietnam's "rice bowl", the Mekong Delta accounts for some 60 percent of the nation's total
production of the staple crop.
Upstream in neighbouring Cambodia, this year's floods have already killed 22 people and forced the
evacuation of nearly 400,000 people, prompting urgent appeals from Phnom Penh for international assistance.
Last year Vietnam appealed for 9.4 million dollars in flood relief in an unprecedented international appeal
through the United Nations.
Three straight months of flooding on the Mekong turned the delta into a huge inland sea clearly visible on
satellite pictures.
It is the third year in a row that Vietnam has been hit by killer floods -- in 1999, nearly 600 people were killed
on the central coast.
Agence France Presse - August 29, 2001.
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