Tropical Storm Kajiki left at least one person dead in Vietnam after it made landfall as a powerful typhoon yesterday, unleashing dangerous winds and prompting authorities to evacuate tens of thousands of residents as it surged through the country’s central provinces.
In Ha Tinh province, one person died, 144 houses were flooded and 621 roofs were blown off, Viet Nam News reported, citing the Directorate of Dikes and Disaster Prevention. Eight other people were injured in Quang Tri and Ha Tinh.
Kajiki barrelled into Vietnam’s Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces at around 3pm local time (6pm AEST) with wind speeds of 133km/h, according to Vietnam’s national weather forecast agency. It has since weakened into a tropical storm.
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Powerful gusts ripped through properties, uprooted trees from the ground and knocked down lampposts, according to state media.
The provinces are around 350km south of the capital, Hanoi. Earlier, residents and business owners along the coast had boarded up windows and stacked sandbags outside homes, restaurants and hotels.
Authorities shut down schools, two provincial airports, and organised mass evacuations from coastal provinces as Kajiki – the fifth named storm to hit Vietnam this year – churned toward the Southeast Asian nation.
More than 40,000 people had been evacuated in low-lying coastal communities as of Monday morning, according to the state-run VN Express.
Huge waves pound central provinces
Eyewitnesses described huge waves gushing through streets in the coastal regions, according to Reuters, as roofs collapsed and homes were flooded.
“It’s terrifying,” said Dang Xuan Phuong, 48, who lives in Cua Lao, a tourism town in Nghe An.
“When I look down from the higher floors, I could see waves as tall as two meters, and the water has flooded the roads around us.”
Areas in Ha Tinh were left without power and unstable phone networks after torrential rain forced residents to seek shelter, according to state media reports, which also said that the storm triggered tidal surges, flooding coastal areas in Thanh Hoa province.
The storm was moving slowly and “gradually weakening,” according to an update from the country’s weather forecast agency yesterday evening, but added that the risk of strong winds remained.
It came after the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre previously forecast that Kajiki would drop to tropical depression strength by early Tuesday.
Authorities in the country’s central provinces activated emergency measures on Sunday, which included a plan to evacuate around 587,000 people from Thanh Hoa, Quang Tri, Hue and Danang provinces, banning fishing vessels from leaving shore and securing dams and flood walls, according to VNA.
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More than 300,000 military personnel were mobilised with the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force on standby for rescue operations, the news agency reported.
Vietnamese government officials had compared the storm to Typhoon Yagi, the most powerful storm to hit the region last year, which devastated Vietnam’s north, killing about 300 people and causing widespread damage to infrastructure, factories and farmland.
Yagi made landfall as the equivalent of a category 4 hurricane, and while Kajiki is weaker, it has brought destructive winds and flooding.
Climate projections ‘materialising’
The storm is expected to move inland towards Laos and Thailand, China’s Meteorological Centre reported, with the risk for flash flooding and mudslides increasing. Between 200-400 millimetres of rain is forecast in some regions in Vietnam, with isolated areas exceeding 600mm.
Kajiki had brushed past the southern coast of China’s Hainan island and parts of Guangdong province on Sunday evening.
Known for its sandy beaches, luxury resorts and duty-free shopping, the city of Sanya on Hainan island closed tourist attractions, shuttered businesses and suspended public transport.
Sanya downgraded its typhoon alert yesterday morning but cautioned that heavy rain and storms in southern Hainan were expected to continue, Reuters reported.
Scientists have long warned the human-induced climate crisis – for which developed nations bear greater historical responsibility – has only exacerbated the scale and intensity of regional storms, with countries in the Global South facing the worst impacts.
“It’s frightening to see our projections from just last year already materialising,” Benjamin Horton, a professor of earth science at City University, Hong Kong, told the Associated Press.
“We are no longer predicting the future — we are living it.”
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