Typhoon Yagi weakens after killing 49 in Vietnam
By Yan Zhuang
HANOI – At least 49 people were killed and more than 700 injured as Typhoon Yagi carved a path of destruction through northern Vietnam over the weekend, the country’s state media reported Monday (9).
The storm, one of the most powerful of 2024, made landfall Saturday (7) in the coastal province of Quang Ninh with winds of up to 127 mph, equivalent to those of a Category 3 hurricane. It triggered deadly landslides, flooded towns and blew roofs off homes, local media reported, before weakening into a tropical depression by Sunday (8) morning.
Last week, Yagi smashed into the Philippines, where it killed at least 20 people, before claiming four more lives in southern China and causing about 1 million people to flee their homes.
By Monday night, at least 49 people had been killed and 22 people were missing across northern Vietnam, the Department of Dike Management and Natural Disaster Prevention and Control said, according to state-run media. That included six people, including an infant and a 1-year-old, who died after a landslide swept through a residential area in the mountainous province of Lao Cai, near Vietnam’s northern border with China, the state-run Vietnam News agency reported.
Another four people from one family died in a landslide in Hoa Binh province, about 20 miles southwest of Hanoi, the capital, state media said.
As the storm moved inland across Vietnam’s mountainous northwest, rainfall led to flooding in several provinces and forced thousands to evacuate, state media said. On Monday morning, part of a bridge connecting the districts of Lam Thao and Tam Nong was swept away by floodwaters, the Vietnam News agency said. Three people were injured in the collapse and eight people were missing, the government said.
In Hanoi, where at least one person was killed, the storm flooded streets, damaged roofs and caused widespread power outages, Vietnam News reported. It toppled thousands of trees, including some of the city’s oldest trees, which were considered landmarks, state media said.
At least 732 people were injured as a result of the storm, many of them in Quang Ninh, the government said. At least 46,500 homes were damaged, and hundreds of thousands of acres of crops, including rice and fruit trees, were damaged or flooded, it said.
-New York Times
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