Typhoon Damrey Hits Vietnam, Kills 16 in China
Date: 28-Sep-05
Country: VIETNAM
Author: Ho Binh Minh
The 16 died on the Chinese island of Hainan as the typhoon ploughed across early on Monday, most of them when buildings collapsed or trees were felled by powerful winds which left economic damage estimated at 10 billion yuan ($1.2 billion)
One person was killed in Vietnam's Thanh Hoa province, where the typhoon landed, while trying to tie down the roof of a house, the state-run Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper said.
Vietnam had worked frantically as the typhoon approached to evacuate as many people as possible and deployed small armies to shore up the sea dykes and to quicken rice harvesting.
Prime Minister Phan Van Khai had ordered that only young people, police and soldiers stay behind to watch over dykes built to keep the sea out of rice fields.
But the barriers were soon breached in some areas, flooding and isolating villages.
The dykes were built to withstand strong gales, but Damrey -- Khmer for elephant -- was blowing at 133 kph (83 mph) as it came ashore, cutting electricity supplies and ripping up trees.
Lieutenant-General Hoang Ky told state television that sea surges of up to 5 metres (16 feet), made worse by high tides, slammed into the coastline.
Nguyen Van Hop, head of the Nghia Phuc commune People's Committee in the northern province of Nam Dinh, told Reuters by telephone that 2 km (1.2 miles) of dykes had been damaged in his area alone.
"We are not able to save the dyke but people are safe," he said.
OIL, COFFEE ESCAPE
The typhoon missed the Central Highlands coffee belt further to the south in Vietnam, the world's second-biggest coffee producer after Brazil, and had no impact on crude oil output as Vietnam's offshore rigs are well to the south.
But at least 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of rice were damaged in the northern region, Vietnam's second-largest rice growing area after the Mekong Delta, producing mainly for domestic consumption.
State media said thousands of homes were flooded and nine people were injured as electricity poles and houses collapsed. Power blackouts were widespread in several northern and central provinces.
Typhoons, which frequently hit Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and southern China throughout the northern summer and autumn, gather strength from warm sea water and tend to weaken and finally dissipate after making landfall.
Damrey already had weakened slightly after hitting land and moving west to Laos, but still brought torrential rain, the Vietnam weather bureau said.
Fears of breached dykes had prompted the mass evacuation by truck and bus from vulnerable coasts to solid buildings, such as schools, well before Damrey stormed ashore and headed inland.
More were moved out of flooded areas as dykes gave way, officials said, and state television reported that the military had to use amphibious vehicles to rescue people who tried to return to their homes only to be trapped by floodwaters.
As the typhoon moved into Laos, Vietnam Television showed lines of farmers starting to return home on Tuesday evening.
Thailand issued flash flood warnings for the north and northeast, which forecasters said could expect three days of heavy rain until Damrey petered out.
There was no immediate word on the impact on communist Laos, but drought-stricken Cambodia was looking forward to the rain.
"We are on the tail of the typhoon, so there will be rain across our country which is good for areas hit by drought," said Mao Hak, a senior official at the Water Resources Ministry.
(Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in BEIJING, Ek Madra in PHNOM PENH and Nguyen Van Vinh in HANOI)
