ENVIRONMENT-WEATHER: Planning error blamed for rain deaths –

HÀ NỘI — Residential planning excluding the flood drainage corridor and abnormal torrential rains are blamed for causing the deaths of 18 people last weekend in the south central coastal province of Khánh Hoà’s Nha Trang City.

Three people are still missing after the storm which also injured 28 and damaged a number of buildings.

At a meeting on Monday in Hà Nội held by the Việt Nam Disaster Management Authority under the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control, details of the aftermath were released.

Nguyễn Trường Sơn, deputy head of the authority said the area around Rớ Mountain’s foot was a sparsely-populated area ten years ago.

But now it became very crowded with a lot of multi-storey houses, without the correct flood drainage systems in place.

He said that when the torrential rains hit the area, the flood drainage corridor was limited, causing serious consequences for local residents.

Sơn added that flash floods and landslides now even occurred in the city. “It was a hard lesson,” he said.

If the houses were really located in the area that blocked the flood drainage corridor, it was very dangerous, he said.

The second reason was that torrential rains hitting the city last weekend were not forecast. Up to 300mm of rain fell during 12 hours, he added.

However, the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting only warned about the rains with the rainfall of 100-150mm and Khánh Hoà Province’s Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting predicted only about of 150-200mm of rain, he said.

Hoàng Phúc Lâm, deputy director of the national centre, said weather radars were blocked by high-rise buildings in the city, leading to inaccurate forecast.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hoàng Văn Thắng on Monday led a team to visit the province in order to direct activities to quickly find a solution to the problems.

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Next typhoon on the way

A tropical low-pressure system was reportedly formed near the East Sea yesterday, heading through the south-central region of Việt Nam, including Khánh Hoà Province on Saturday.

The national centre for hydro-meteorological forecasting warned that at 1pm yesterday, the tropical low-pressure system was some 300km east-southeast of the Philippines’ central-region coast, with the strongest wind speed of 60 km per hour.

The tropical low-pressure system was moving west-northwest at 25 km per hour. The centre predicted that it could gain more strength and become a typhoon by 1pm today before entering the East Sea.

According to the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control, it was forecast to be a strong typhoon, causing torrential rains for the south-central region, including Khánh Hoà Province.

Therefore, the committee ordered Khánh Hoà Province’s administration to urgently prepare for the storm to minimise damage. The province was told to evacuate people living in areas facing high-risk of flash flood and landslide, to safe place. —VNS