The death toll in Vietnam from Typhoon Yagi has risen to 143, with dozens more missing, the government said on Wednesday, as relentless rain continued to cause landslides in small villages and flooding in the capital of Hanoi.
Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit Vietnam in decades. It arrived on Saturday, tearing through the country’s north with 90 mph winds. Even as the storm’s strength has diminished, downpours have continued, drowning one of the most densely populated river valleys in Southeast Asia and raising alarm about Vietnam’s vulnerability to extreme storms brought on by climate change.
For thousands of years, people have tried to manage water around the Red River, which starts in China and flows southeast through Hanoi to the Gulf of Tonkin. Flooding is an occasional fact of life for the fertile area, but on Tuesday, the Red River was rising by nearly four inches every hour, according to state media. Factories had already been shut down. Schools were telling families to keep children home.
By Wednesday, a landslide had smothered a hamlet of 158 people in the mountainous province of Lao Cai, bordering China. Video from Vietnam state media showed a flat area of muddy soil with no sign of life. Search and rescue teams have recovered 22 dead bodies from the scene.
“It’s the most deadly landslide caused by the typhoon so far,” said Nhu Thi Tam, a local official near the village. She cut short a phone interview as she hurried to move her family and belongings out of her house after another urgent landslide alert was issued in her neighborhood.
Closer to Hanoi, the authorities had also diverted traffic away from several bridges, after one collapsed on Monday, leaving eight people unaccounted for.
By lunchtime in the capital city, silty water, waist-high, filled several neighborhoods. On streets normally crowded with honking motorbikes, flat-bottomed skiffs moved to and fro, pushed along by young men in pink and purple plastic ponchos as thin as tissue.
“The water has reached the second floor of my home, so I need to move out of here and stay at my friend’s house for a few days,” said Nguyen Thi Dung, 52, as she sat on a boat, holding a pet cat and her personal belongings.
“I have been living in this neighborhood for my whole life, flooding is nothing new here,” she added. “But the flood came so fast.”
The government — in a country where insurance is extremely rare — has not yet provided estimates of the total cost of the damage. Residents in the coastal cities of Haiphong and Quang Ninh, where the storm first hit Vietnam, said the destruction had been extensive.
Analysts said it would likely be the worst natural disaster that Vietnam has experienced in a generation, if not longer, suggesting that it could lead to a greater focus on climate change.
“I think a major long-term impact will be psychological, which can cause some changes in policy,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
Vietnam’s emergency management agency said that most of the deaths were caused by landslides and flash floods. Along with the dead and missing, the agency said that 764 people have been injured.
Lao Cai Province has reported the highest casualties, with 45 people killed and many missing. In that province and elsewhere, thousands of soldiers have been deployed to support victims and manage what has become a steadily-increasing set of evacuations.
Photos on a national government Facebook page showed police in the area carrying furniture from homes and guiding residents in orange life vests to safety.
There are also increasing concerns over further flooding as Vietnam’s hydropower dams are discharging water from swelling reservoirs along the Red River.
In the industrial hubs of Bac Giang and Thai Nguyen on Wednesday afternoon, families were preparing to flee. In Hanoi as well, some were making plans to head to higher ground, while others tried to make do with water rising.
“We have no where else to go, so we have to stay here,” said Nguyen Van Tien, 70 as he sat in his living room with water above his ankles. He said he and his wife, Hoang Thi Hue, 68, own a neighborhood tea shop, and that it was unclear when they would be able to work again.
“My life is totally disrupted,” he said.
“And we’re not able to make any money at all,” Ms. Hoang added.
Together, behind a wood table set up to keep water from rushing in, they watched boats outside their door carrying people to somewhere dry as they glanced at slate gray skies, wondering when they might turn blue again.
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