Storm kills at least 40 in Vietnam

VIETNAM: Tropical storm Mirinae, which hit the Philippines as a deadly typhoon at the weekend, killed at least 40 people and left 11 missing in Vietnam, a national disaster official said Tuesday.

Mirinae was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical depression before it hit communist Vietnam’s central coastal areas on Monday.

“Most of the victims were because of serious floods that hit the provinces of Phu Yen, Binh Dinh and Gia Lai in particular,” the official said. Fifty-nine people were reported as injured so far, the official added.

The national disaster committee’s earlier toll was four dead and two missing.

According to the committee, up to 338 millimetres (13 inches) of rain fell in Vietnam’s central regions. The storm damaged or destroyed an estimated 2,600 houses and flooded some 1,800 hectares (4,400 acres) of farmland.

“Rain is not very heavy now but several areas in our province are seriously flooded,” official Nguyen Xuan Phu of Binh Dinh province told AFP earlier on Tuesday.

State television showed people stuck on their roofs, waving for help from local emergency workers in Phu Yen, and rescuers trying to take children and old people to higher areas.

Vietnam’s coastal provinces had evacuated more than 50,000 people before the storm hit Monday night but some residents were still trapped by flooding Tuesday, the disaster committee said.

Mirinae also killed two people in Vietnam’s neighbour Cambodia and left 19 people dead and three missing in the Philippines. HANOI, Wednesday, AFP