Vietnam braces for storm to hit

HANOI/MANILA: Vietnam scrambled to evacuate thousands of people from their homes as tropical storm Saudel approached yesterday, bringing more misery for a country that has endured weeks of heavy rains and floods that have killed more than 100 people.

Having already battered the Philippines, the storm was grinding its way across the South China Sea and was expected to hit Vietnam on Sunday, making landfall in central areas that are suffering from their worst flooding in two decades.

The region has been hit by particularly heavy rainfall amid the onset of a La Nina weather system, which is characterised by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Humanitarian groups have warned the floods in Vietnam will exacerbate the hardships already being experienced by some of the country’s poorest communities because of the Covid19 pandemic.

Volunteers across Vietnam have been making highly calorific ‘‘banh chung’’, a traditional dish of parcels of sticky rice stuffed with pork and wrapped in tropical leaves, to be handed out in the worsthit areas. — Reuters