Typhoon Kalmaegi made landfall on the central coast of Vietnam on Thursday evening, local weather officials said, after leaving a trail of destruction in the Philippines.
The powerful storm was churning at about 8 p.m. over the mainland near the provinces of Dak Lak and Gia Lai, the Vietnamese National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said in an update.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister urged the country’s emergency response agencies and ministries to ready themselves as the country braces for the impact of the typhoon.
The Vietnamese weather center said coastal areas may see waves up to 26 feet and a storm surge up to 2 feet. Winds were expected to be as strong as about 84 mph, the center said.
The country is already battling flash floods and landslides after record rainfall in late October. Those floods killed at least 35 people, officials told AFP.
Some 100,000 homes flooded and the country experienced more than 150 landslides, Vietnam’s environment ministry said, according to AFP.
The typhoon is expected to bring a heightened risk of flooding, flash floods and landslides, weather and state officials said.
“Additionally, infrastructure already weakened by previous flooding may be increasingly unreliable,” the U.S. Consulate in Vietnam said in a pre-landfall advisory.
A trail of destruction in the Philippines
In the Philippines, where the typhoon made landfall on Tuesday amid heavy rains and flooding, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. approved a state of emergency declaration on Thursday.
That declaration was intended to “expedite government response efforts in areas” affected by the storm, according to a press release from the official Philippine Information Agency.
The storm killed at least 66 people, according to state-run media. The official Philippine News Agency reported that “most” of those deaths “were due to fallen debris, landslides and flooding.”
Another six Philippine Air Force personnel were killed in a helicopter crash on Tuesday while performing humanitarian assistance, officials said.
The country was already recovering from an offshore earthquake and typhoons in the last few months. The Philippine Area of Responsibility is hit an average of 20 per year, most in the world, according to the Philippines Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
Another potential super typhoon is approaching the country now, local officials said in a news release. That storm is expected to make landfall either Friday night or Saturday morning, officials said.
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