Authorities have identified 24 of the 51 people who were killed this week in flash floods in northern Vietnam, officials said on Thursday.
The total number of fatalities from flash flooding that came on the tail end of Typhoon Damrey is still unknown because some areas remain cut off, an official from Yen Bai province said.
”Several remote villages of the two districts remain inaccessible because of roads and bridges were made impassable or seriously damaged by the flash flood,” said Nguyen Trung Loi, director of the Yen Bai provincial department for agriculture and rural development.
”Some telephone lines are still down, so it is hard to know the exact death toll right now,” Loi said by telephone on Thursday evening. ”Hopefully, we will be able to get into all flash-flood-affected villages by tomorrow.”
Rain had been falling for several days in Yen Bai province, 180km north-west of Hanoi, before Typhoon Damrey lashed Vietnam’s coast on Tuesday. Although Van Chan and Tram Tau communes were not directly hit by the typhoon, rains that followed the storm worsened the situation.
The flash flood hit the remote mountainous communes late on Tuesday, and reports began appearing of deaths on Wednesday.
In the neighbouring province of Lao Cai, two people were also killed, one by a landslide and the other swept away in flash flooding early on Wednesday, said Pham Duc Dung, an official from the provincial flood and storm-control committee.
The death toll from Damrey, which means ”elephant” in Khmer, stands at at least 90. Eight people died last week in the Philippines before the typhoon hit China, killing 16, and then claimed at least 59 lives in Vietnam, where it also wiped out at least 15km of protective coastal dykes and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes. Another seven people died in flooding in Thailand.
In Vietnam, thousands of hectares of crops have been flattened, and aid groups said that it will be months before the rice fields can be used again after they were salinated by the flood waters.
Floods hit Nepal
Meanwhile, more than 49 people were killed in flooding and landslides that followed torrential rains this week in far-western Nepal, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
The independent Nepali-language daily Nepal Samacharpatra said all the victims lived in a group of remote villages under the jurisdiction of the Shirsha village development committee.
But a far wider area was affected by the flooding and landslides that hit after three days of heavy rain from Friday and Sunday along the border with India.
The Nepal Samacharpatra said a team of Nepali Red Cross officials and human rights activists went to the affected villages in Dadeldhura district, about 550km west of Kathmandu, to help with rescue efforts and, quoting the district administration office, reported that the chief district officer announced immediate aid of 15 000 rupees (about $200) to each of the affected families.
Among the victims were more than 1 600 people who were left homeless in Chandani village on the border.
The Meteorological Office in the Nepalese capital said many parts of west Nepal experienced 150mm to 220mm of rain in a 24-hour period from Saturday to Sunday. — Sapa-DPA