Vietnam prepares for Mekong flood

Floods killed 700 people in Vietnam last year

By Owen Bennet Jones in Hanoi

A typhoon has struck central Vietnam, killing two people, and leaving about 10,000 homeless.

As the Vietnamese authorities assess the damage in Ha Tinh province, they are also preparing themselves for the possibility of serious floods in the Mekong Delta.

Typhoon Wukong destroyed or damaged thousands of homes and affected roads, electricity transmission lines and some sea dyke systems.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed the deaths of two people as a result of the storm and says 69 others were injured.

The ICRC says that some rice fields were lost because sea water floods.

Last year flooding in central Vietnam killed more than 700 people when two waves of heavy rains fell in the space of one month.

Flood fears

It is feared that significant floods in Cambodia and Laos could mean water levels in southern Vietnam will rise to dangerously high levels.

The Vietnamese official news agency said that it is forecast that some rivers will be higher than they were in 1978 when major floods caused huge damage and killed hundreds of people.

Western aid officials say that considerable development work has taken place in the Mekong Delta since then and it is not yet clear how much damage high waters levels would do.

Thousands of families have already been evacuated from their homes as a precautionary measure.