Asia death toll rises as Ketsana floods recede

By Tran Thi Minh Ha (AFP) – 2 October 2009

THUA THIEN-HUE, Vietnam — Asian nations were left counting the cost of Typhoon Ketsana Friday, with the death tolls rising in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, according to Red Cross reports.

Vietnam's death toll reached 99 on Friday with another 14 missing, said an official from the national flood and storm control committee.

In Cambodia the number of deaths rose to at least 17, while 16 people were killed and 135 left missing in Laos, the Red Cross said on Friday.

With flood waters receding in much of typhoon-struck Vietnam on Friday, residents hung clothes out to dry, cleared fallen trees and cleaned the muck left by one of the country's worst disasters in recent years.

In the poor fishing village of Rong in Hue city, wet clothes hung on fences and trees while women moved furniture outside late Thursday to dry, or cleaned the muddy floors of their metal-roofed houses.

"We are still cleaning up but things will be OK," said Nguyen Van Tam, 48.
Vietnam's death toll reached 99 on Friday with another 14 missing, said an official from the national flood and storm control committee.

The heaviest toll came in the fishing province of Quang Ngai, in the area where Ketsana made landfall on Tuesday with winds that state media said reached up to 149 kilometres (92 miles) per hour.

Quang Ngai recorded 27 deaths and there were 21 in Kon Tum, a mountainous province with a large population of poor ethnic minority tribes, the official said.

Officials are now concentrating on returning the evacuees to their homes "and cleaning the environment which was very polluted after the passage of the typhoon", an official from the flood and storm committee in Quang Ngai said late Thursday.

Some homes shown on state television looked like they had been hit by an earthquake.
Downed trees are being cut through with saws and people are sweeping debris off roads, television pictures showed. Soldiers are assisting in the effort.

"It was dirty but... we helped each other so it was a lot of fun," said Nguyen Van Ngoc, a sailor in Rung village.

He was among the hundreds of thousands of people who fled their homes because of the storm and said he only returned on Wednesday after the floodwaters, which had reached halfway up the wall of his metal-roofed house, had drained away.

"When the water receded there was mud in the house," said Tran Phuc, a father-of-six in Tong Chanh village south of Hue.

He said the family spent a day cleaning the floor and the furniture.

The typhoon caused damage initially estimated at 120 million dollars to Vietnam, the government said on Thursday in a detailed report obtained by AFP.

It said more than 170,000 homes were flooded while a similar number had damaged roofs, and more than 6,300 other houses collapsed, mostly in Quang Nam province.

Thousands of farm animals died and almost 50,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of farmland were damaged in the country which is the world's second-largest rice exporter.

The death toll from Typhoon Ketsana in Cambodia has risen to at least 17, the country's Red Cross said on Friday.

Three more people were reported to have been killed after Ketsana swept through the country earlier this week, said Uy Sam Ath, director of the disaster management department at the Cambodian Red Cross.

The new toll includes a man who died in eastern Mondulkiri province and two people -- a father and a daughter -- who drowned when their boat capsized Wednesday evening in central Kampong Chhnang province, he said.

Northern Cambodia suffered widespread flooding after the storm battered the country Tuesday evening, affecting thousands of people and destroying hundreds of homes across the country, officials said.

Ketsana has killed 16 people and left 135 missing in Laos, the country's Red Cross said.
Fourteen of the deaths came in southern Attapeu province on the border with Cambodia, said Bountheung Menvilay, head of the agency's disaster preparedness division.

Two other deaths came in Savannakhet province, but Attapeu and adjacent Sekong provinces were most affected by the storm, which passed through the country on Wednesday, the Red Cross official said.

"We do have casualties in that location," said government spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing, who was unable to confirm the number of deaths.

Bountheung said most of the deaths came during flash floods caused by the storm which has displaced 37,500 people in one of Asia's poorest nations.

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Source: AFP