Floods kill five in Vietnam, thousands evacuated
HANOI - Seasonal floods have killed at least five people in southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta where 28,000 people have been evacuated to higher ground, state-run media reported on Saturday.
Four people, three of them children, drowned in Dong Thap province where nearly 1,500 houses were submerged and another 136 homes collapsed, the Tuoi Tre newspaper said, quoting a report by the province's disaster management committee.
Floodwaters from Cambodia pouring into the fertile southern delta, which produces around half of Vietnam's grain, have forced 5,600 families -- 28,000 people -- to higher ground in Dong Thap, the report said.
"Waters have inundated all the fields and the low-lying areas in Hong Ngu district upstream but now it's still not the peak of the flooding season," said a resident in Cao Lanh, the capital of Dong Thap, 143 km southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.
An 18-year-old girl drowned when her boat capsized in the neighbouring province of An Giang and several provincial roads were under water, Tuoi Tre said.
Officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Traders said the summer-autumn rice crop was safe as farmers had ended harvesting before the floods arrived. Vietnam is the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand.
The Mekong Delta floods often peak in October and fully recede in early November.
In 2000 the worst floods in decades killed 485 people in the delta, 334 of them children.
Since then the authorities have tried to minimise the annual toll, opening swimming classes for children and day-care centres to protect infants while their parents work in the fields.
Reuters - September 10, 2005.
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