47 dead as storm hits Vietnam

Tropical Storm Durian has slammed into Vietnam’s southern coast, killing at least 47 people, injuring more than 300 and destroying thousands of houses, officials said today.

The deaths brought Vietnam’s storm-related death toll to 50. Three fishermen drowned yesterday off the coast of Phu Yen province when their boat capsized as the storm approached.

The storm, believed to have killed more than 1,000 people in the Philippines, was packing winds of 73 miles per hour when it made landfall in southern Vietnam this morning, weather forecasters said.

At least 23 people were killed and nearly 150 others injured when their houses collapsed in Ba Ria Vung Tau province, 78 miles south-east of Ho Chi Minh City, said Pham Nhat Quang, an official from the provincial military command.

Some were killed and many injured by flying tin sheets blown off houses, he said. More than 11,000 houses in the province were destroyed or damaged and authorities were searching for three fishermen reported missing after they refused to evacuate their offshore fish farms.

The storm claimed 17 more lives today in Ben Tre province, where more than 4,000 houses were destroyed and 26,000 others damaged, provincial governor Cao Tan Khong said.

“The areas where the eye of the storm passed through looked like they were just bombarded,” said local official Nguyen Van Tu.

Four people were killed, two when their house collapsed and two when their boat capsized, in Tien Giang province, and two people died after a concrete cross fell on them while they sought shelter at a Catholic church in Binh Thuan province, disaster officials said.

One person was killed by a falling tree and three others were missing after their boat capsized in Vinh Long province, disaster officials said. In Ho Chi Minh, authorities were searching for five fishermen lost on a river during the storm.

Weather forecasters said the storm was expected to continue weakening as it moves into the Gulf of Thailand tomorrow morning.

On Thursday, it lashed the Philippines with 165 mph winds and a five-hour deluge that dislodged tonnes of debris from the slopes of the Mayon volcano. Walls of mud and boulders destroyed nearly every standing structure in their path.

Official figures showed 450 dead, 507 injured and 599 missing, but Senator Richard Gordon, head of the national Red Cross, said he believed more than 1,000 died in the thousands of homes buried under volcanic debris, mud and floodwaters.