Typhoon Molave hits Vietnam, more than a million people affected

Typhoon Molave was one of the biggest storms to hit the country in two decades, bringing a second round of deadly landslides there this month. Torrential rains and flooding unleashed a mudslide on Oct. 18 that leveled soldiers’ barracks in Huong Phung Commune, in the central coastal province of Quang Tri.

It lashed the central region with heavy rain causing floods and landslide. More than 19 people are killed and 45 missing in central Vietnam.

Hundreds of soldiers and heavy machinery have been deployed to search for survivors after landslides triggered by torrential rains from Typhoon Molave. The landslides hit remote areas in the central province of Quang Nam late on Oct 28.

An estimated 7.7 million people live in the affected areas, including as many as 1.5 million who have been “directly affected”, the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Viet Nam said in a humanitarian update late Wednesday. There are also reports that 174 people have died or are missing. 

Of these, some 177,000 people considered vulnerable (poor or near-poor), should be prioritized for urgent humanitarian assistance, it added. 

At the site of one landslide that buried a village of 53 people, rescue workers pulled 33 survivors from the mud, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.

“The whole village was flattened,” Ho Thi Ha, who lost her father in the landslide, told Tuoi Tre. “There’s nothing left.”