Storm death toll hits 109 in Vietnam

Nov 6, 2009, 11:18 GMT

   Hanoi - The death toll from Tropical Storm Mirinae in central Vietnam has risen to 109, the country's Steering Committee for Storm and Flood Control reported Friday.

   The authority said 16 people remained missing, and local media were reporting death figures as high as 119.

   Flood waters were beginning to recede across much of Phu Yen and Binh Dinh provinces, but remained as high as 1 metre in some towns.

   Local newspaper Dan Tri quoted Nguyen Xuan Lan, director of the national weather authority, as saying flooding had been exacerbated by the presence of large hydropower dams in the country's Central Highlands. Some dams released water on November 2 to avoid dam breaks when the rains hit, which worsened flooding.

   The National Steering Committee for Storm and Flood Control estimated the damage at some 60 million dollars.

   Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai was quoted Thursday as blaming the high death tolls on the national weather authority's failure to forecast the extent of the rains Mirinae would bring.

   But the Vietnamese newspapers Tuoi Tre and Thanh Nien pointed to heavy illegal logging in the Central Highlands as having worsened the floods. When Typhoon Ketsana hit central Vietnam in September, hundreds of huge logs came crashing downstream along swollen rivers, exposing widespread illegal timber operations.

   Typhoon Mirinae brought winds of up to 133 kilometres per hour and dumped up to 600 millimetres of rain when it came ashore Monday morning in the central provinces of Phu Yen, Binh Dinh, Quang Ngai and Khanh Hoa. It also affected the Central Highland provinces of Gia Lai and Dak Lak, Vietnam's main coffee growing area.

   National authorities said a total of 94 fishing boats had been sunk at their wharfs and 754 houses destroyed.

   Some 17,000 hectares of rice and 2,300 hectares of vegetables were destroyed or flooded.

   Vietnam evacuated over 27,000 people from storm-affected areas to evade landslides. Authorities had warned 18,000 fishing boats carrying 104,000 fishermen to take shelter in advance of the storm.

   Typhoon Ketsana killed at least 246 people in the Philippines and 172 in Vietnam, and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in each country.