Aftermath: People sitting amid debris in a destroyed building after Yagi hit Ha Long in Quang Ninh province. — AFP
Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, left dozens dead in northern Vietnam and widespread damage as it churned westwards, preliminary government estimates showed, while the weather agency warned of more floods and landslides.
At least 46 people had died and 22 were missing, mostly because of landslides and floods triggered by the typhoon, Vietnam’s disaster management agency said yesterday.
The typhoon made landfall on Saturday on Vietnam’s northeastern coast, home to large manufacturing operations of domestic and foreign companies, and was downgraded to a tropical depression on Sunday by the meteorological agency.
It cut power to millions of households and companies, flooded highways, disrupted telecommunications networks, downed a medium-sized bridge and thousands of trees and brought to a halt economic activity in many industrial hubs.
Managers and workers at industrial parks and factories in Haiphong, a coastal city of two million, yesterday said they had no electricity and were trying to salvage equipment from rain in plants whose metal sheets roofing had been blown away.
“Everyone is scrambling to make sites safe and stocks dry,” said Bruno Jaspaert, head of DEEP C industrial zones.
Walls of a factory in Haiphong of South Korea’s LG Electronics collapsed, according to pictures and a Reuters witness.
LG Electronics said there were no casualties among its employees and acknowledged damages at its production site noting a warehouse with refrigerators and washing machines had been flooded.
“Lots of damages,” said Hong Sun, the chairman of the South Korean business association in Vietnam when asked about the typhoon’s impact on Korean factories in coastal areas.
The weather agency warned of more floods and landslides, noting that rainfall ranged between 20.8cm and 43.3cm in several parts of the northern region over the past 24 hours. — Reuters
