HANOI/HAIPHONG: Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, left dozens dead in northern Vietnam and widespread damage to infrastructure and factories as it churned westwards, preliminary government estimates showed on Monday.
Forty-nine people have died and 22 are missing, mostly because of landslides and floods triggered by the typhoon, the Vietnamese government said.
The typhoon made landfall on Saturday on Vietnam’s northeastern coast, home to large manufacturing operations of domestic and foreign companies. It was downgraded to a tropical depression on Sunday but the meteorological agency warned on Monday of further floods and landslides. Yagi cut power to millions of households and companies, flooded highways, disrupted telecommunications networks, downed a medium-sized bridge and thousands of trees and brought economic activity in many industrial hubs to a halt.
Managers and workers at industrial parks and factories in Haiphong, a coastal city of two million, said on Monday they had no electricity and were trying to salvage equipment from plants where metal sheet roofing had been blown away, as more rain was expected. “Everyone is scrambling to make sites safe and stocks dry,” said Bruno Jaspaert, head of DEEP C industrial zones, which host plants from more than 150 investors in Haiphong and the neighbouring province of Quang Ninh.
The walls of a factory of South Korea’s LG Electronics in Haiphong collapsed.
LG Electronics, a major maker of appliance and consumer electronics, said there had been damage at its production site but no casualties among its employees. It said a warehouse with refrigerators and washing machines had been flooded.
“Lots of damage,” Hong Sun, the chairman of the South Korean business association in Vietnam, said when asked about the typhoon’s impact on Korean factories in coastal areas.
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