At least 90 people have been killed in flooding in central Vietnam sparked by Tropical Storm Mirinae, which slammed into the country this week after pummelling the Philippines, officials said yesterday.
A further 22 people were reported missing after the storm struck on Monday, destroying hundreds of homes and leaving more than 200,000 people stranded, regional officials said.
TV footage from the provinces of Phu Yen and Gia Lai, which were among the worst hit regions along with Binh Dinh, showed rescuers in boats helping desperate residents escape some of the worst flooding there in decades.
PHOTO: AFP
Water reached up to the rooftops of buildings in some places. The VTV channel reported that 200,000 people were stranded in Binh Dinh Province alone.
“It is the most devastating flooding in more than 30 years in Phu Yen,” the national disaster committee said in a statement, after part of the province’s system of dykes was overwhelmed.
Two thousand soldiers have been deployed to help with the rescue effort.
The national disaster committee said Mirinae, which hit the Philippines as a typhoon over the weekend, had destroyed 700 homes and damaged more than 13,000 others when it hit Vietnam’s central coastal areas on Monday.
Mirinae also killed two people in Cambodia and left 19 dead and three missing in the Philippines.
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