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| Sunday, 18 August 2002 |
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Vietnam floods kill four, 22,000 evacuated HANOI, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Floods and landslides in Vietnam have killed at least four people this week and forced soldiers to evacuate about 22,000, with waters forecast to rise to dangerous levels, officials said on Saturday. Landslides on Friday night killed two members of an ethnic minority in Dak R'Lap district in the key coffee-growing province of Daklak, an official of the province's Floods and Storms Prevention Committee said. Another man died in landslides on Friday morning in the northern province of Ha Giang, a 13-year-old-girl drowned in a river in the nearby province of Phu Tho and nearly 130 houses have so far been submerged in Lao Cai province. But in China's province of Yunnan, which borders Ha Giang and Lao Cai to the south, casualties are higher, with 28 dead and 39 missing in landslides this week. Vietnam is one of the world's leading producers of rice and coffee but floods in its Central Highlands coffee belt and in the Mekong Delta rice basket have not hit crops. "Floods hit some rice-growing areas but so far have not affected our coffee trees," said the official in Daklak. Vietnam Airlines resumed flights on Saturday between Daklak's capital of Buon Ma Thuot and Ho Chi Minh City after the rain slackened, an airline official said. The rain had forced it to suspend flights earlier in the week. Landslides set off by the last two days of floods have forced 22,000 people to leave homes in the coffee-growing provinces of Lam Dong and Dong Nai, where 5,500 houses are under water. "Coffee is planted in the higher areas and is therefore not hit by floods," said a Lam Dong official, who said no deaths have yet been reported, though rising rivers still put lives at risk. "Soldiers are using boats to help evacuate people." Floods have taken at least 17 lives in Vietnam since July 31. Saturday's weather reports said waters in northern rivers and in the Mekong Delta in the south were nearing a point where high speed waterflows put dykes and river banks at risk of erosion. Although towns and cities are still safe, this is just one step down from the most critical level -- uncontrollable floods with severe damage to life and property. Floods in the Mekong Delta killed 390 people -- mostly children -- between August and November last year. Rice traders said the floods were not expected to hurt the summer-autumn rice crop, as the harvest is nearly complete in the upstream provinces of An Giang and Dong Thap. |
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