The 800-odd casualties and over VND14 trillion (US$785.85 million) in property loss made Ketsana one of the worst storms to strike Vietnam in 40 years, the national flood and storm control committee has said.

In all, six central-region provinces were dramatically affected by the tearing gales, torrential rains and heavy flooding, the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Protection told a press conference on Tuesday.

At least 163 people died, 11 went missing and 629 were injured by the ninth storm from the East Sea this year.

The typhoon caused historic floods in the Poko, Dakbla and other river valleys in Kon Tum Province, the committee said at the media briefing held in Hanoi in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Protective forests disappear

As Ketsana caused such damage and misery, the authorities of the affected provinces are looking into the loss of poplar forests along the coast due to human activity.

Had the issue been more prominent in the public mind, willow trees would have been planted to replace the lost poplars and protect the coast against the ferocious winds and the erosion caused by storm surges.

“With the poplar forests declining, there’s less to break the force of the winds and reduce the impact of the storm surges from the sea. It threatens the lives and properties of hundreds of coastal dwellers,” said Nguyen Duy Khac, an official of Binh Thanh Commune in hard-hit Quang Nam Province.

Duc Loi Commune chairman Le Thanh Phach related how his community had lost more than 70 hectares of coastal land and 10 hectares of poplar trees in the past ten years.

“Without protective poplar forests along the coast, and with natural disasters becoming more frequent and unpredictable, our commune is exposed and under threat,” Phach said.

Tran Van Can, chairman of Quang Nam’s Binh Hai Commune, said much of Binh Hai’s protective forest had been destroyed and nearly 50 hectares of coastal land had been turned into prawn-farming ponds.

“The locals have no place to keep their boats safe from the storms as the forests have been wiped out so the dykes are being eroded by the sea,” Can said.

Binh Hai resident Nguyen Nghiem, 74, complained about the rampant felling of poplar trees to clear the way for more prawn ponds in recent years, a practice that allowed sand to encroach on the land and left his community at the mercy of nature at its worst.

Van Phu Chinh, director of the Flood and Storm Protection Center for the Central and Central Highlands Region, also blamed human destruction of the forests for the greater damage caused by typhoons in recent years.

Chinh went on to note that 241 fishermen had died or disappeared in Typhoon Chanchu in 2006 and Typhoon Xangsane had left more than 70 dead in central Vietnam, and also mentioned the historic floods in 2007.

In response, the higher-ups are urging local governments to grow and maintain more protective forest, and to build more flood-control dams on the upper reaches of the region’s flood-prone rivers.

Parma hits Luzon

As the central region continued clearing up Ketsana’s mess, Typhoon Parma returned from the East Sea and revisited the Philippines’ island of Luzon on Wednesday morning, Vietnam’s National Weather Center announced.

The storm, which had killed at least 17 people after striking Luzon on Saturday, was forecast on Thursday to remain in place for a spell before heading out over the East Sea again within the next 24-48 hours, the weather bureau says on its website.

Whether Parma will reach Vietnam or not is unknown at present.

Still, the national committee for flood and storm protection control is taking no chances and has warned boats and ships to keep away from Parma, and told rescue personnel to be ready for any emergency.

In related news, one person died in a flash flood in Binh Thuan Province on the lower central coast early Tuesday morning, the provincial flood and storm protection committee announced.

The waters that raged through Bac Binh District swept away 127 homes and destroyed over 1,000 hectares of farm produce and many irrigation systems.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my 30 years here. There was so much water and it moved so quickly. I wonder where it came from,” said Bui Van Lu, an official of the district’s Song Binh Commune.

Nguyen Ngoc Hai, deputy head of the provincial flood and storm protection committee, blamed the disaster on torrential rain that had fallen farther up the Luy River Valley.

Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre