By Khanh Vu and Francesco Guarascio
HANOI (Reuters) -Thousands of residents of Vietnam’s capital living close to the swollen Red River were evacuated on Wednesday as its waters flooded streets days after Typhoon Yagi battered Northern Vietnam, killing at least 143 people.
Yagi, the most powerful typhoon in Asia this year, made landfall on the northern coast of Vietnam on Saturday and moved westwards, hitting Hanoi with gales and heavy rain. The storm also hit other provinces up the Red River, the area’s largest, collapsing a bridge on Monday.
“This is the worst flood I have seen in 30 years,” Hanoi resident Tran Le Quyen, 42, told Reuters, adding that she had to move furniture out of her flooded home to higher ground.
“It was dry yesterday morning. Now the entire street is flooded. We couldn’t sleep last night.”
Some schools in Hanoi have told students to stay home for the rest of the week due to flood concerns, while thousands of residents living in low-lying areas have been evacuated, according to sources, government and state media.
Floods and landslides in other provinces continued to exact a deadly toll, with the latest update from authorities listing 143 deaths and 58 missing people.
“My home is now part of the river,” said Nguyen Van Hung, 56, another resident of a Hanoi neighbourhood on the banks of the Red River.
Further inland towards the city centre, charity Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation had to evacuate its office after warnings from authorities about flood risks.
“People were moving frantically, moving their motorbikes, relocating items,” said Carlota Torres Lliro, the charity’s press officer, expressing concerns for “dozens of kids and families who live in slum areas and makeshift houses by the river.”
Typhoon Yagi also severely damaged a large number of factories and flooded warehouses in northern Vietnam’s export-oriented industrial hubs, forcing plants to shut, with some expected to take weeks to resume full operations, executives said.
The disruptions could affect global supply chains as Vietnam hosts large operations of multinationals that mostly export their products to the United States, Europe and other developed countries.
(Reporting by Khanh Vu, Francesco Guarascio and Phuong Nguyen in Hanoi; Editing by John Mair and Miral Fahmy)
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