Flooding, landslides and lightning have killed 15 people and left one missing since Friday night in Vietnam, bringing the country’s toll in a week of torrential rain to 42, reports said on Sunday.
Thousands have been evacuated to higher ground as water levels in the northern region’s main rivers were expected to continue rising with more rainfall forecast for the coming week, state media quoted a government report as saying.
Northern Vietnam is not the country’s key area for rice production, but more rain was also expected in the southern Mekong Delta rice basket in coming days. However, most of the summer-autumn rice crop has already been harvested.
Natural disasters, especially floods and storms, kill several hundred people in Vietnam each year, mainly during the storm season between May and October.
This year’s rains and floods caused no damage to the coffee crop in the Central Highlands where coffee trees are planted on higher ground.
Officials said four people were killed in a landslide in the northern province of Yen Bai on Saturday. Lightning killed two people in Nghe An province and two more on the outskirts of the capital, Hanoi, while five were swept away in flash flooding.
Sunday’s Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said two people drowned as their boat capsized early on Saturday on a river in the southern province of Dong Nai.
Another man was swept away and reported missing in the northern province of Phu Tho after he tried to save his fish pond, the government report said.
By Friday, at least 27 people were reported killed in northern and central regions of the South-East Asian country. — Reuters