HANOI, Sept 9 — Typhoon Yagi and the landslides and floods it triggered have killed at least 24 people and injured another 299 in northern Vietnam on the weekend, the government said, as authorities on Monday warned of more flooding.
The typhoon was Asia’s most powerful storm this year and made landfall on the country’s northeastern coast on Saturday. It has disrupted power supplies and telecommunications in several parts of the country, mostly in Quang Ninh and Haiphong, the government said in a statement issued late on Sunday.
The weather agency on Monday warned of more floods and landslides, noting that rainfall ranged between 208mm and 433mm in several parts of the region over the past 24 hours.
“Floods and landslides are damaging the environment and threatening people’s lives,” the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said in a report.
In a separate bulletin, the centre said flood risks are particularly high in Lang Son, Cao Bang, Yen Bai and Thai Ngyen provinces.
Meanwhile, Typhoon Yagi was downgraded to a tropical depression on Sunday, after wreaking havoc in northern Vietnam, where it damaged factories and infrastructure in export-oriented industrial hubs.
Vietnam’s meteorological agency issued the downgrade on Sunday but cautioned about the ongoing risk of flooding and landslides as the storm, the strongest to hit the country in decades, moved westwards.
The typhoon had earlier claimed the lives of four people on the southern Chinese island of Hainan and 20 in the Philippines, the first country it hit a week ago.
In Haiphong, a Vietnamese coastal city of 2 million which hosts factories of several multinationals, industrial parks remained closed on Sunday, workers and managers told Reuters.
One was flooded, and workers said they had been sent home after they tried to go to work unaware of the conditions at their plants because telecommunications networks had not been restored.
“The damage for the factories is really significant. Some have lost roofs or entire front facades,” said Bruno Jaspaert, head of DEEP C industrial zones, which host plants from over 150 investors in Haiphong and the neighbouring province of Quang Ninh.
He said at least 80 per cent of the factories had been damaged but the industrial parks had not been flooded.
“It might take a month if things go well before I fully recover from this damage,” said Do Van Truong, a 45-year-old shop owner in Haiphong, noting the ceiling of his seafood shop had collapsed while power and water supplies had not yet been restored.
Several highways in the north of the country were flooded or seriously disrupted, state media reported, publishing pictures and footage of landslides.
After it made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday afternoon, Yagi triggered waves as high as 4 metres in coastal provinces, leading to extended power and telecommunication outages that have complicated damage assessment, the government said.
— Reuters
