Typhoon Yagi leaves 59 dead and missing in Vietnam

Hanoi, September 9 (IANS): Typhoon Yagi and the resulting landslides and floods have left 59 people dead or missing in northern Vietnam, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said on Monday.

The natural disasters also left 247 people injured, including 157 in Quang Ninh province and 40 in Hai Phong city. 25 unmanned vessels, mostly fishing boats, sank. Over 113,000 hectares of rice fields and more than 22,000 hectares of other crops were damaged. 1,500 aquaculture cages were damaged or washed away. 190,000 chickens died. Nearly 121,700 trees were uprooted or damaged, Xinhua reported, citing the Vietnamese news agency.

On Monday morning, a steel bridge collapsed in the northern Vietnamese province of Phu Tho, causing ten cars and two motorcycles to plunge into the Red River and leaving 13 people missing.

According to local media reports, 21 people were killed in landslides and are missing in Cao Bang province, and 15 people in Lao Cai province suffered the same fate.

According to the ministry, Typhoon Yagi was the strongest storm to hit northern Vietnam in the past 30 years.

Yagi, which means goat in Japanese or the constellation Capricorn, is the eleventh named storm. It is one of only four Category 5 super typhoons recorded in the South China Sea, along with Pamela in 1954, Rammasun in 2014 and Rai in 2021.

Yagi originated from a low pressure system that formed at an altitude of about 540 km on August 30. On September 1, the system was classified as a tropical storm by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and named Yagi.