Hanoi flooded, Typhoon Yagi leaves 155 dead

Vietnam's capital Hanoi has evacuated thousands of people living near the flooding of the Red River as its water level reached its highest in 20 years and flooded streets, days after Typhoon Yagi devastated the north of the country, killing at least 155 people.

Yagi, Asia's strongest typhoon this year, brought storms and heavy rains as it moved westward after making landfall on September 7. This week it caused a bridge to collapse as it swept through provinces along the Red River, the region's largest river.

“My home is now part of the river,” said 56-year-old Nguyen Van Hung, who lives in a neighborhood on the banks of the Red River.

Across the country, 155 people were killed by the typhoon and the resulting landslides and floods, while 141 are missing, the government estimates.

Vietnam's state-owned energy company EVN said on Wednesday (September 11) that it had cut off power supplies in some flooded parts of the capital for safety reasons.

Mai Van Khiem, director of the National Center for Hydrometeorological Weather Forecasts, said in a statement that the water level of the Red River was at its highest in two decades and more rain was expected over the next two days.

Some schools in Hanoi have ordered their students to stay home for the rest of the week while thousands of residents of low-lying areas have been evacuated, the government and state media reported.

Closer to the city center, the Blue Dragon Children's Foundation charity evacuated its offices on Tuesday after authorities warned of flood risks.

“People were moving like crazy, moving their motorcycles and moving objects,” said spokeswoman Carlota Torres Lliro, expressing concern for dozens of children and families living in makeshift shelters along the river.

EVN announced on Wednesday that it had stopped discharging water from the Hoa Binh hydroelectric power plant, the second largest in northern Vietnam, into the Da River, a tributary of the Red River, to reduce the amount of water.

Vietnamese authorities also expressed concern on Wednesday that Chinese hydroelectric dams could discharge water into another tributary of the Red River, the Lo River, known in China as the Panlongjiang. Beijing said the two countries would work together on flood prevention.

Strike against factories

Yagi has wreaked havoc at numerous factories and flooded warehouses in export-oriented industrial centers on the coast east of Hanoi, forcing businesses to close. In some cases, full operations are not expected to resume for weeks, executives say.

The disruptions threaten global supply chains, as Vietnam is home to large branches of multinational corporations that mainly ship to the United States, Europe and other industrialized countries.

In other provinces north of the capital, landslides caused by severe flooding killed dozens of people.

“The ground floor of my house is completely under water,” said Nguyen Duc Tam, a 40-year-old resident of Thai Nguyen, a town about 60 kilometers from Hanoi.

“Now we have no fresh water and no electricity,” he said.

Another resident, 30-year-old Hoang Hai Luan, said he had not seen such flooding in the area for over 20 years.

“My belongings and possibly those of many others are completely lost.”

The factories on the outskirts of the city of 400,000 inhabitants include a large facility belonging to Samsung Electronics, which ships about half of its smartphones worldwide from Vietnam.

There were no signs of flooding at the facility on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said. REUTERS