IRIN
VIETNAM: New threat of flooding in south
22 August 2008


HANOI, 22 August 2008 (IRIN) - Aid officials say emergency supplies have 
reached nearly all of those affected by recent heavy flooding in 
northern Vietnam. But as clean-up efforts continue, the country faces a 
fresh assault as river levels rise dangerously in the south.

"Because of global warming, Vietnam is experiencing more floods and 
disasters," said Setsuko Yamazaki, director of the UN Development 
Programme, addressing an inter-agency briefing this week on the damage 
done by the latest storm.

A total of 133 people were killed and 34 are missing after tropical 
storm Kammuri hit Vietnam 7-9 August, government officials said. Many 
residents died in their sleep when mudslides crushed their homes. Large 
swaths of rice fields were literally swept away, taking with them 
families' livelihoods.

In the province of Lao Cai, 18 percent of farming land was destroyed, 
said Tran Van Tuan, manager of the Natural Disaster Mitigation 
Partnership, which is coordinating with national and international 
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and donors to respond to the 
humanitarian emergency.

Inter-agency assessment teams made up of NGOs, UN agencies, and 
government experts were dispatched to the hardest hit provinces after 
the floods hit. At a meeting in Hanoi on 20 August the teams reported 
that most of the floodwaters had receded and short-term relief was 
getting to villages previously cut off from aid.

18,000 homes damaged

But in order to repair more than 18,000 damaged houses and clean out 
19,000 hectares of rice fields, longer-term aid will be needed, stressed 
the assessment teams.

"The government has been very active in helping victims," said Luu Quang 
Dai of the NGO Plan International who recently returned from surveying 
the damage in Phu Tho Province. "But the area is too much. It will take 
more than a year to recover. [In that time] many people will fall below 
the poverty line."

There were also concerns that many children will not be able to attend 
school this autumn. The government said 165 classrooms had collapsed or 
were washed away. At least 100 more are filled with rocks and mud. The 
assessment teams said families devastated by the storm would also have a 
difficult time paying tuition fees or buying books.

Early warning systems

In some areas, early warning systems have been installed to alert 
residents to evacuate. But when the waters rose, many of the alarms 
failed to go off.

"We do have some flood warning devices," said Le Thanh Du, deputy 
director of the Agriculture and Rural Department for Lao Cai Province. 
"It's just a pilot programme and it didn't work well. On that day, the 
electricity was cut off so the bell did not ring to warn the local 
people. I think if we have a comprehensive flood warning system, people 
living in flood areas could evacuate before the floods come."

Bracing for floods in south

As the northern provinces struggle to recover from the storm, 1,500km to 
the south, farmers in the Mekong Delta are bracing for a deluge of water 
dumped by the tropical storm days earlier in Laos and Cambodia. The 
water, which hit record levels in those countries, is flowing rapidly 
down the Mekong river into southern Vietnam.

"The water level is now at 3.3m and rising 7-8cm a day," Nguyen Van 
Khang, director of Agriculture and Rural Development in Tien Giang 
Province, told IRIN on 23 August. "The biggest threat now is that the 
flood coming from upstream could be combined with high tides."

Most of the summer rice crop has already been harvested, assuaging fears 
that the floodwaters will cause any immediate economic damage to 
Vietnam's rice basket. But preparations were under way to evacuate some 
1,200 people if the waters rise much higher, noted Khang.

Unlike northern and central Vietnam, the Mekong is not subject to flash 
floods or landslides which cause most of the flood-related deaths. But 
when rivers burst their banks, entire villages can quickly become 
inundated. And, said Khang, the worst is probably yet to come: "We don't 
even reach the peak of the flood season until 15 September," he said.

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