Typhoon Hits Vietnam

Typhoon Kills at Least 41 in Vietnam Top of Form

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By SETH MYDANS

Published: September 30, 2009

DA NANG, Vietnam — Typhoon Ketsana headed west toward Laos on Wednesday after battering central Vietnam with powerful winds and heavy rain, leaving behind blue and sunny skies but dangerously rising floodwaters. The official death toll in Vietnam was placed at 41, but officials said that number was expected to rise as more reports came in and as the floodwaters threatened further destruction.

Skip to next paragraph “The rain was heavy and the wind was like crazy,” Nguyen Trong Tung, a photographer, said. “Right now the sun is beautiful, there are white clouds and the sky is blue, and the streets are already clear.”

The clear weather is deceptive and the danger has not passed, said Andrew Wells-Dang, a representative of Catholic Relief Services, who called Ketsana “the most serious typhoon that’s hit here in four or five years.”

“The casualty figures will get worse over the next days as more reports come in and also as the river levels rise from rain up in the mountains that will cause more flooding,” he said in a telephone call from the capital, Hanoi.

The floods could reach the historic highs of 1964, said Le Van Duong, a relief and disaster mitigation coordinator for World Vision International, a Christian aid organization.

The storm was already weakening as it headed toward Laos, weather stations reported.

“The system is expected to completely dissipate over land within the next 12 hours as it continues to track to the west,” the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

The damage in Vietnam was far less than in the Philippines, where the typhoon was reported to have caused 246 deaths and inundated the homes of nearly 2.3 million people. More storms were reported to be heading toward the Philippines on Wednesday.

In Cambodia, at least 11 people were killed Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. “We’re used to storms that sweep away one or...