HANOI/MANILA – A powerful typhoon slammed into central Vietnam yesterday, killing 32 people and flooding towns and villages along the country’s long coastline after leaving a trail of destruction in the Philippines.
The death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Ketsana rose to 246, while the economic cost was nearly $100 million (€69 million), officials said. Philippine authorities braced for another storm that could hit later this week.
Truong Ngoc Nhi, deputy chairman of the People’s Committee in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province, said on state-run television that the typhoon was the worst in more than three decades.
The official said workers were trying to restore electricity to the Dung Quat oil refinery, which had been due to get back online today after an outage shut the plant last month.
The central Vietnam region hit by Ketsana lies far north of the country’s critical Mekong Delta rice basket. Rain dumped on the Central Highlands coffee belt could delay the start of the next coffee harvest by up to 10 days, but exports would not affected, traders said.
Meanwhile, forecasters said a new storm forming in the Pacific Ocean was likely to enter Philippine waters tomorrow and make landfall later on the northern island of Luzon.
Ketsana dumped more than a month’s worth of average rainfall on Manila and surrounding areas in one 24-hour period. About 80 per cent of the city of 15 million was flooded.
The Philippine government has come in for scathing criticism for its response, with many calling it inadequate and delayed. More than 1.9 million people were affected and 375,000 had been evacuated from their homes. – (Reuters)