Flash floods and landslides brought by tropical storm Kammuri since Saturday have battered mountainous villages in northern Vietnam, killing more than 100 people and leaving 48 missing, the government said today.
The toll from the disaster is expected to rise. Communication links were still cut off for many affected areas even though river waters were receding after nearing their highest level in four decades, disaster officials said.
A tropical low-pressure system in the Tonkin Gulf and moving towards the northern region, would dump heavy rains and trigger landslides from late tonday, the government said in an urgent message to the military, police and rescue forces.
It urged disaster management authorities to tighten monitoring of river and sea dykes and "to actively evacuate people and property from dangerous areas".
Authorities in coastal provinces should direct ships out of the path of the low-pressure system, often the first stage of a tropical storm, the government said.
Lao Cai province, bordering China, was the hardest hit with 38 people missing and 36 people killed since late last week, the National Centre for Flood and Storm Prevention said in a report.
Officials in Lao Cai, popular among foreign tourists for its mountain resort town of Sapa, said all of the dead and missing were local people whose homes were washed away by flash floods.
At least 33 people were killed in the neighbouring province of Yen Bai, many buried alive as landslides hit at night as they slept.
Prices of vegetables, pork and chicken have been surging in Yen Bai, where residents also rushed to stockpile fresh water and instant food on fear of prolonged powercuts, the Tien Phong newspaper said.
About 1,600 passengers, more than half of them foreign tourists on their way to Sapa, have been stranded in Yen Bai since Saturday after their trains had to stop to avoid landslides.
River waters in Yen Bai peaked on Sunday at close to the record level in 1968, the government said.
Roads and bridges were destroyed, preventing aid from reaching affected areas, while 4,230 homes remained inundated and nearly 9,000 hectares (22,240 acres) of rice and other crops in the region have been destroyed, the report said.
The disasters struck a region about 1,500 km (930 miles) north of Vietnam's main rice and coffee production zones.
The Border Guard Command and Lao Cai police said they had sent 1,100 troops to search for the missing and evacuate residents from the areas vulnerable to floods and landslides.
Reuters