Typhoon Yagi and the landslides and floods it triggered 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 north-eastern 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 (8.2in to 17.1in) 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 were particularly high in Lang Son, Cao Bang, Yen Bai and Thai Ngyen provinces.
Yagi weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday.
Among its victims was a family of four killed after heavy rain caused a hillside to collapse on to a house in the mountainous Hoa Binh province of northern Vietnam, according to state media.
Since Friday, others had been killed in storm-related incidents, some crushed by falling trees or drifting boats, the defence ministry’s disaster management agency said.
On Sunday afternoon, six people, including a newborn baby and a one-year-old, were killed in a landslide in the Hoang Lien Son mountains of north-western Vietnam.
The slide was triggered by heavy rains and high winds after Yagi made landfall on Saturday.
“We found the six bodies, including a one-year-old boy and a newborn, in the landslide,” a local official from the Sapa people’s committee, who asked not to be named, told Agence France-Presse.
“The rain was heavy, weakening the soil and triggering [the] landslide.”
At Ha Long Bay, a Unesco world heritage site, fishers were in shock as they examined the damage on Sunday morning.
The disaster management authority said 30 vessels sank at boat lock areas in coastal Quang Ninh province along Ha Long Bay after being pounded by strong wind and waves.
The typhoon also damaged nearly 3,300 houses, and more than 120,000 hectares of crops in the north of the country, the authority said.
Before making landfall in Vietnam, Yagi tore through southern China and the Philippines, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens of others.
Typhoons in the region are now forming closer to the coast, intensifying more rapidly, and staying over land for longer due to climate change, according to a study published in July.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
