Vietnam braces for deadly typhoon
hanoi/manila — Hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta have been evacuated as the region braces for the arrival of Tropical Storm Tembin, which left more than 240 people dead in the Philippines.
Weather forecasters say the delta’s southern tip will be in Tembin’s path, and that heavy rain and strong winds starting on Monday night could cause serious damage in the vulnerable region, where facilities are not built to cope with such severe weather.
National television station VTV reported that several hundred thousand people were being evacuated from their houses, which are mostly made from tin sheets and wooden panels.
Vietnam’s disaster prevention committee said 74,000 people had been moved to safety from vulnerable areas, while authorities in 15 provinces and cities were prepared to move more than 1 million.
The government ordered that oil rigs and vessels be protected and it warned that about 62,000 fishing boats should not venture out to sea.
“Vietnam must ensure the safety of its oil rigs and vessels. If necessary, close the oil rigs and evacuate workers,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc was quoted as saying on a government website.
Schools were ordered to close in the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City on Monday, a working day in Vietnam.
On Sunday, Tembin hit the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, parts of which are contested by several countries, including Vietnam and China.
No casualties were reported in outposts there. Vietnam, like the Philippines, is regularly battered by typhoons that form over the warm waters of the Pacific and barrel westwards into land.
Tembin will be the 16th major storm to hit Vietnam this year. The storms and other disasters have left 390 people dead or missing, according to official figures. In the Philippines, rescue workers were still struggling to reach some remote areas hit by floods and landslides that Tembin’s downpours brought, as the death toll climbed to more than 240. Scores of people are missing. The full extent of the devastation was only becoming clear as the most remote areas were being reached. Health worker Arturo Simbajon said nearly the entire coastal village of Anungan on the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao island had been wiped out by a barrage of broken logs, boulders and mud that swept down a river and out to sea. —