Vietnam floods (Photo courtesy: AP) Hanoi: The death toll from a week of flooding and record rainfall in central Vietnam rose to 40 on Tuesday, officials said, as another powerful storm threatened the battered region. Torrential rains have inundated much of Vietnam’s central region, turning roads into canals, breaking river banks and inundating some of the country’s most visited historic sites.
A height of up to 1. 7 meters (5 ft 6 in) fell on a building. 24 hours of torrential rain broke the national record.
The deaths occurred in Hue, Da Nang, Lam Dong and Quang Tri provinces, according to an update from the environment ministry’s disaster management agency, which said six people were missing. The death toll on Sunday was 35.
The onslaught of extreme weather will continue, the National Weather Bureau said, with Typhoon Kalmegi forecast to make landfall in the early hours of Friday morning. “It’s tiring.
” Tran Thi Quy from Hoi An city, where the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Ancient City was waist-deep in water. “We are tired of the floods, but what can we do,” the 57-year-old woman told AFP after her home was flooded three times in less than 10 days. “We moved all our furniture to higher ground, but they’re all wet.
” Vietnam receives heavy rainfall between June and September, but scientific evidence has identified a pattern of human-induced climate change. Making extreme weather more frequent and destructive. Ten typhoons or tropical storms in any given year typically affect Vietnam directly or offshore, but Typhoon Kalmegi is scheduled to occur on the 13th in 2025.
The typhoon is currently wreaking havoc in the central Philippines, where it has killed at least five people and displaced hundreds of thousands. The national weather bureau said it could hit Vietnam’s coast on Thursday with winds of up to 166 kilometers (100 miles) per hour.
On Tuesday, the region was still reeling from last week’s extreme weather, with some remote areas still isolated due to landslides that blocked roads. State media reported that about 15 meters of wall at the Hue Imperial Citadel, known as Dai Noi, had collapsed. According to the disaster agency, about 80,000 homes were flooded, while more than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of crops were destroyed and more than 68,000 cattle were killed.