UPDATE - Typhoon turns on Vietnam after Philippine mayhem
Date: 13-Nov-01
Country: VIETNAM
Meteorologists said Typhoon Lingling weakened to a tropical low pressure system after making landfall in central Vietnam overnight, but torrential rain had swollen some rivers to danger levels, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of families.
State-run Vietnam Television said eight people died in the central province of Phu Yen, but gave no details.
Disaster officials said a 16-year-old boy was electrocuted in Quang Ngai province after Lingling tore through power lines and a three-year old child was killed under a collapsed house in Binh Dinh province.
Officials in Binh Dinh said thousands of trees had been uprooted and 74 fishing boats damaged or sunk.
In Quang Ngai, officials said the storm flattened 12 houses and sunk two fishing boats.
A Reuters Video News cameraman saw dozens of big trees uprooted on Vietnam's north-south Highway One running through the province of Phu Yen and in its capital town of Tuy Hoa, about 150 km (93 miles) south of Quang Ngai.
Le Anh Tuan, a 40-year-old Tuy Hoa resident, said the typhoon took about three hours to pass over his house. "My wife, my children and I had to hide here. We didn't dare go out," he said.
A disaster official in Quang Ngai said about 400 families were evacuated on Sunday from low-lying areas around Tuy Hoa.
Lingling was the first typhoon to hit central Vietnam this year, although last month a tropical low pressure system brought torrential rains and floods to eight central provinces, killing at least 44 people.
STORM WEAKENS AFTER LANDFALL
The official Voice of Vietnam radio called Lingling the strongest storm to hit the country in 15 years, but a national weather centre report yesterday morning said it had weakened to a low-pressure system.
It was now moving west towards northern Cambodia and southern Laos at about 15 km (10 miles) an hour, the report said.
Overnight, Lingling brought winds gusting up to Force 10 on the Beaufort scale, or 102 km (63 miles) per hour, and torrential rain to seven provinces of Vietnam from Quang Tri to Khanh Hoa, 500 km (312 miles) to the south. It also brought rains to the coffee-growing Central Highlands.
A state coffee exporter in the key growing province of Daklak said rains had disrupted the harvest but no damage to trees had been reported.
Officials in Phu Yen and Quang Ngai said even though Lingling had weakened, rain was swelling rivers to danger levels.
The disaster official in Quang Ngai said rivers there would hit alarm levels by late Monday, at which all low-lying land would be submerged and dykes in danger of collapse.
The meteorologist at the weather centre said Lingling could bring more rain to upstream parts of the Mekong River in Cambodia and the lower parts of Laos.
He said a swelling of the Mekong River upstream could slow the receding of floodwaters downstream in the rice-growing Mekong Delta which have killed at least 366 people since August, 286 of them children, but done only slight damage to crops.
Flash floods and landslides in Vietnam's central region in October and November 1999 killed more than 730 people.
Lingling left a trail of death and destruction in the Philippines last week, with at least 270 people believed killed, including 226 who drowned or were buried under mud.
Fishing boats in central Vietnam were ordered back to port at the weekend and authorities ordered evacuation of exposed coastal areas or places vulnerable to riverbank erosion or landslides.
