Storm Ketsana leaves 331 dead across SE Asia

Residents navigate by boats on a flooded street following the passage of the Typhoon Ketsana in the tourist town of Hoi An in central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam yesterday while a woman holds her son in thigh-deep floodwater at her home at Dien Nam commune. Photo: AFP

Typhoon Ketsana extended its destructive rampage through Southeast Asia yesterday, blowing away whole villages in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as the regional death toll rose to 331.
The storm has unleashed some of the worst flooding in a decade to hit the region, having already submerged most of the Philippine capital at the weekend, and governments are struggling to help more than two million survivors.
"I have never seen such a strong wind in my life," Pang Phot, a police officer in Cambodia's badly hit Sandann district, told AFP by telephone.
"Many wooden houses were immediately blown away and many others collapsed to the ground. It was raining heavily and people could not flee their homes because the wind hit immediately," he said.
Ketsana killed 246 people in the Philippines while still a weaker tropical storm, before strengthening over the South China Sea and smashing into Vietnam on Tuesday, leaving another 74 dead from flooding and landslides.
It moved inland to lash Cambodia overnight, killing 11 more people, and caused meter-high floods in Laos on Wednesday where it was downgraded to a tropical depression.
Authorities in northeastern Thailand were also on high alert but said there had been no damage yet.
Hungry and stranded survivors were marooned on rooftops in flooded parts of central Vietnam, complaining of a slow government response to their plight.
In the historic tourist town of Hoi An, a Unesco world heritage site, some people were trapped on the metal roofs of their homes until soldiers arrived by boat to rescue them, AFP reporters saw.
"We have not received any support from local authorities," a 28-year-old mother of twin toddlers said in nearby Dien Ban district, Quang Nam province, where the typhoon made landfall on Tuesday night.
On Tuesday flooding hit parts of the major city of Danang as well as Hue, the former capital and another World Heritage site.
"Our aid work is very difficult, even with a greater mobilisation from the soldiers and the police, because the scale of the flooding is too vast and we lack equipment," said Phan Nhu Nghia, president of the Vietnamese Red Cross in Danang.
Officials and the UN estimated around 200,000 people in Vietnam had fled their homes. Five hundred and thirty homes had collapsed and 100,000 others were flooded or damaged, they said.
In Cambodia, authorities said the homes of thousands of people had been evacuated as the storm packed winds of up to 145 kilometres (90 miles) an hour.
Nine were killed and 28 injured in central Cambodia while two died in the northeast overnight as the country was battered by the storm, officials said. The victims included a grandmother, mother and three children in one house.
"At least nine people were crushed last night when their houses fell down," said Chea Cheat, chief of the Red Cross office in central Kampong Thom province, adding that at least 92 houses in his province were destroyed.
In deeply impoverished and isolated Laos, five or six villages had reportedly been flooded in Savannakhet province and aid workers were making their way there by car, aid agency World Vision said.
"We have the capability to urgently ready 500 aid packs if our assessment teams find these are needed," World Vision aid worker Vatthanathavone Inthirath said.
In the Philippines, the United States said Wednesday it would send soldiers and military equipment to help its former colony recover from devastating floods triggered by Ketsana.
Ketsana dumped the heaviest rains in more than four decades on Manila and surrounding areas on Saturday, submerging 80 percent of the nation's capital.
Four days later, some areas remained underwater or knee-deep in mud, while hundreds of thousands of people were crammed into makeshift evacuation centres.
Meanwhile, there were warnings that another looming typhoon may add to the devastation. Typhoon Parma was lurking to the east of the Philippines and on course to hit the country on Thursday or Friday.