Hanoi (VNA) – Deputy chief of the Office of the Central Steering Committee forNatural Disaster Prevention and Control Nguyen Truong Son asked localities inthe Mekong Delta region to prepare measures to cope with natural disasters at ameeting in Hanoi on July 31.

He urged them to keep a close track of rain,flood, and storm developments in order to promptly inform people and prepareevaluation plans, especially in the low-lying and riverside areas, as well as preparationsto quickly repair damaged sea dyke systems and address coastal erosions. 

According to Tran Ba Hoang, Director of theSouthern Institute of Water Resources Research, localities in the Mekong Deltaneed to harvest their summer-autumn rice crops soon and shift to growing othercrops resistant to natural disasters, in order to mitigate damage frompotential floods.

The hydro-meteorological station in the southernregion anticipated that on August 13, water levels are likely to reach a heightof 3.7m at the Tan Chau station on Tien River and 3.1m at the Chau Doc stationon Hau River. There is a high risk of flooding occuring in An Giang, Dong Thap,and Long An provinces.

According to the Central Steering Committee on NaturalDisasters, in the first half of the year, 75 people were killed or missing, and48 others were injured during natural disasters. Total economic damages reached868.5 billion VND (37.73 million USD).

A total of 14 kinds of natural disastersoccurred in the country during the period, including two typhoons, two tropicaldepressions, 88 thunderstorms, seven flash floods, numerous landslides, sevenstrong sea wind spells, and four extreme cold spells, among others.

In total, 509 houses were destroyed, whileanother 12,571 were damaged.

Fifteen thousand hectares of rice and 1,700ha ofindustrial plantations were also damaged, while nearly 9,000 fowl and 17,000cattle were killed due to natural disasters.

In the remaining half of the year, Vietnam can expect12-13 typhoons, with at least four or five making landfall, according to theNational Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting.

2017 witnessed 16 storms and six tropicaldepressions in the East Sea. Of them, five storms and three tropicaldepressions hit Vietnam.

Severe disasters resulted in 386 people dead andmissing last year, 122 more people than in 2016, and 86 more than the averagenumber of the past decade.

Economic losses amounted to 60,000 billion VND(2.6 billion USD), a 30 percent increase compared with 2016, and 2.5 timeshigher than the average of the past decade. –VNA