HANOI (AFP) – Millions of people across Southeast Asia struggled yesterday with flooded homes, power cuts and wrecked infrastructure after Typhoon Yagi swept through the region, as the death toll passed 200.
In worst-hit Vietnam the fatalities rose to 197, with nine confirmed dead in northern Thailand – where one district is suffering its worst floods in 80 years.
Yagi smashed into Vietnam at the weekend, bringing a colossal deluge of rain that has inundated a swathe of northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, triggering deadly landslides and widespread river flooding.
One farmer told AFP his entire 1,800 square metre peach blossom plantation was submerged, destroying all 400 of his trees.
“It will be so hard for me to recover from this loss – I think I will lose up to USD40,000 this season,” said the farmer, who gave his name only as Tu.
“I really don’t know what to do now, I’m just waiting for the water to recede.”
The United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) said the typhoon had damaged more than 140,000 homes across 26 provinces in Vietnam.
UNICEF said it has provided water for homes, health centres and schools in the worst-affected areas and would send medical and sanitation supplies to the Vietnamese government in the coming days.
The high waters have devastated more than 250,000 hectares of crops and huge numbers of livestock, Vietnam’s agriculture ministry said, with farmland around Hanoi hit hard.
Commuters in parts of the Vietnamese capital trudged to work through shin-deep brown floodwaters, though officials said river levels in the city are slowly falling after hitting a 20-year high on Wednesday.
Thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes, while others are struggling with power cuts, and in one badly hit district on the outskirts of Hanoi, more than 15,000 people have been affected by the floods.
Vietnamese state media said a landslide in mountainous Lao Cai province killed seven people with 11 missing.
The incident happened on Tuesday but details have only just got through because communication with the area was cut off, officials told state media.
This comes in addition to a separate landslide in the same province that annihilated an entire village of 37 houses, killing at least 42 people with 53 still unaccounted for.
Fifteen bodies have been recovered in Cao Bang province after a landslide on Monday pushed a bus, along with several cars and motorbikes, into a stream, state media said yesterday.
The Mekong River Commission, the international body overseeing the crucial waterway, issued a flood warning yesterday for the historic Laotian city of Luang Prabang.
