South East Asian Flood Toll, Damage Rise After Typhoon

VIETNAM: October 5, 2006

HANOI - Flooding and landslides triggered by Typhoon Xangsane have raised the death toll to more than 150 in the past week from the storm that hit Vietnam and the Philippines, officials said on Wednesday.

The typhoon's fierce winds and rain destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes when it slammed Vietnam's central coast on Sunday after bringing parts of the Philippines, including the capital Manila, to a standstill last week.

Vietnamese officials said more than 50,000 houses were still submerged along a roughly 1,000 km (600-mile) area from northern Nghe An province to Gia Lai province in the south. Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper said the evacuation of 6,000 people started on Tuesday in Nghe An.

Vietnam's resort city of Danang, the country's fourth largest with 1 million people, was hardest-hit by the typhoon, both in terms of casualties and damage to homes, power supply and its seafood industry.

The National Flood and Storm Control Committee said at least 42 people were killed in Vietnam by the storm or swept away by floods in its aftermath. Seven were missing and 502 injured.

Initial estimates of damage were around 9.98 trillion dong (US$623 million), the government said.

The committee warned residents across the storm-damaged region to "be prepared for flash floods, landslides and flooding in the low-lying areas".

Officials in the Philippines said on Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 110 from 78 on Monday.

At least 88 people were injured and a further 79 were still missing. Around 2.9 billion pesos (US$58 million) worth of properties were damaged by Xangsane, which means "elephant" in the Lao language.

The storm weakened after crossing into Vietnam and moved west across Laos and into Thailand.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are killed and property and crops damaged each year by tropical storms in the two countries, which are separated by the South China Sea. (Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam in Hanoi and Carmel Crimmins in Manila)