VIETNAM: Typhoon Damrey smashes into Vietnam after leaving nine dead in China

Record ID: 1959257

  • Title: VIETNAM: Typhoon Damrey smashes into Vietnam after leaving nine dead in China
  • Date: 27th September 2005
  • Summary: (BN05) HAINAN PROVINCE, CHINA (RECENT) (CCTV - NO ACCESS CHINA/INTERNET) STREET IN RAIN SHIP ANCHORED IN CHOPPY WATER VARIOUS OF CHOPPY WATER WAVES CRASHING ON SHORE CARS DRIVING THROUGH RAINY STREETS TREES WAVING IN THE RAIN RAINY STREET VARIOUS OF WORKERS REPAIRING FELLED POWER LINE VARIOUS OF FELLED POWER LINES
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  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVAC6AL2GCP543NIA4OV9LD1QYRW
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: Typhoon Damrey smashed into Vietnam on Tuesday (September 27) after killing nine people in China, tearing up swathes of coastline from which more than 300,000 people were evacuated in advance, officials and state media said.
    Prime Minister Phan Van Khai had ordered young people, police and soldiers to stay behind to watch over dykes built to keep the sea out of rice fields, but the barriers were soon breached in some areas.
    The sea dykes were built to withstand strong gales, but Damrey -- Khmer for elephant -- was blowing at 133 kph (83 mph) as it came ashore in Thanh Hoa province, cutting electricity supplies and tearing up trees.
    State forecasters said they feared sea surges of up to 5.5 metres (18 feet) -- nearly the height of a fisherman's two-storey house -- in six northern and central provinces. Flash floods and landslides were other possibilities.
    Vietnam Television said four people were injured and several hundred homes flooded in Thanh Hoa when powerful sea surges breached sections of dyke.
    The typhoon had weakened slightly after hitting land and moving west, but still poured down torrential rain, the national weather bureau said.
    Fears of breached dykes had prompted the mass evacuation by truck and bus from vulnerable coasts to solid buildings, such as schools, well before Damrey stormed ashore and headed inland.
    But traders said the typhoon missed the Central Highlands coffee belt further to the south. Vietnam is the world's second-biggest coffee producer after Brazil.
    Thailand also issued flash flood warnings for the north and northeast, which forecasters said could expect three days of heavy rain until the typhoon petered out.
    Parts of Laos were also likely to be hit, but drought-stricken Cambodia saw only benefit.
    When it ploughed across Hainan in southern China, Damrey's winds were gusting up to 180 kph (110 mph), making it the strongest storm to hit the island in 30 years.
    More than 210,000 people were evacuated, but the storm caused large-scale blackouts there as well as killing nine people.
    Major power grids could be fixed in two to three days, but to repair the whole network would take a month, the official Xinhua news agency quoted a Hainan official as saying.
    Chinese media said most of the people died as buildings collapsed or were killed by trees felled by heavy winds.
    Sea water soaked low-lying areas and crops of tropical fruit and rice were damaged or flooded, contributing to economic losses from the storm estimated at 10 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), the China Daily said.
    Typhoons, which frequently hit Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and southern China throughout the northern summer and autumn, gather strength from warm sea water and tend to dissipate after making landfall.
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