Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Viet Nam floods kill 41, survivors ‘destitute’
HANOI — Flooding in central Vietnam has killed 41 people and left survivors destitute, officials said Tuesday, as relatives of at least 15 missing bus passengers watched rescuers scour a river for their loved ones.
The heavy rains that began late last week have washed over three provinces: Nghe An, Quang Binh, and Ha Tinh. In Ha Tinh police said a bus had disappeared in the flood waters on the main north-south highway on Monday.
State television said hundreds of soldiers using boats and metal detectors had been mobilised to search for the bus passengers.
“This morning we used army engineers and their special boats, for detecting bombs and mines, to try to locate the bus that was swept away by the water. But it has been in vain until now,” Lieutenant General Pham Quoc Cuong said on state television.
Police and local residents also joined the search, which was hampered by strong currents, Tran Van Long, deputy head of Nghi Xuan district police, told AFP.
“We think the bus carried between 33 and 37 people. Eighteen people have been rescued,” Long said. “We haven’t been able to locate the bus as the water has been so strong.”
He said about 50 relatives of the missing were at the scene beside the swollen Lam River, near Vinh city, where rain had stopped and the waters were gradually receding.
“The disaster has left thousands of people in the province penniless after their assets were swept away in the flood waters. They have nothing left to eat or drink,” the chairman of Ha Tinh’s local government, Vo Kim Cu, was quoted as saying in the state Vietnam News on Tuesday.
Authorities said more than 150,000 homes had been flooded but emergency supplies including dry noodles, drinking water, medication, and life jackets had been sent to affected areas.
Television pictures showed rescuers in boats delivering instant noodles.
People have suffered “a very severe shortage of food products” in recent days and the top priority is to get them water and something to eat, Nguyen Bang Toan, a Communist Party district chief in Ha Tinh, said on state television.
“We have to save them from hunger,” he said.
The international Red Cross on Monday appealed for more than one million dollars in aid for victims of the flooding, the second major inundation to hit the central region this month.
Flooding earlier left at least 64 people dead in Quang Binh and other central provinces.
“The country is finding greater intensity of floods, greater intensity of droughts,” the World Bank’s vice-president for sustainable development, Inger Andersen, told AFP late Monday in Vietnam.
Andersen, who is on an Asian tour, said climate change was the biggest sustainable development challenge facing Vietnam.
“Managing floods and droughts… becomes absolutely key to mitigating against climatic shocks and climatic events,” she said.