Vietnam's Typhoon Damage
The blue skies over the Hanoi Opera belie the devastation just an hour south of the Capital.
Flying over south-central Vietnam is to fly over a wasteland. Where just days ago there were fields and villages, now there are just miles and miles of mud and standing water. Even from the vantage point provided by a high-flying jetliner, the devastation is as far as the eye can see. The after-effects of Typhoon Xangsane which hit Vietnam and The Philippines at the beginning of October have still not been quantified: thousands of families were displaced ( up to two million in the Philippines alone) – may evacuated as the power of the typhoon grew. Hundreds died, but the figures are not yet known.
At the coast, what looks like sea is now mud: small rivers run between the mud and sand thrown up so that the seabed looks like a mogul-field. Fishing boats try to pick a route through the sandbanks that were not there at the beginning of October.
The industrial city of Danang suffered the biggest casualties as falling buildings killed more than three dozen immediately the typhoon hit.Official figures issued shortly after the storm passed said that more than 12,000 homes had been destroyed, a further 113,000 damaged in Danang, a huge proportion of property in a city of only 770,000.
Just an hour's flight north, Hanoi basks in autumn sun and calm breezes, seemingly a world away.
But changing weather patterns are causing concern further south: some say that the Southern Philippines is set to see more typhoon activity and that the storms are moving south generally. That would bring them towards the northern coast of Borneo, where bad storms are previously unknown and therefore little preparation for the risk.
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