Typhoon Yagi has claimed at least 59 lives, with dozens more missing due to the landslides and floods it has triggered across the Northen part of the country. It is one of the most powerful storms to hit Vietnam in decades.
The storm, which made landfall on Saturday, has caused significant damage across the country’s northern regions, with authorities warning of further floods and landslides.
Vietnam’s disaster management agency reported that most of the missing were caught in landslides or swept away by floodwaters. The typhoon also destroyed infrastructure, including the collapse of a busy steel bridge over the Red River in Phu Tho province. Several vehicles plunged into the water during the incident, with three people rescued and hospitalized.
A bus carrying 20 passengers was also swept away by floods, and while rescue operations are ongoing, hopes are fading for those unaccounted for. The typhoon’s impact extended beyond human casualties, as millions lost power across the country. State-run energy provider EVN confirmed that more than 5.7 million people were affected by blackouts, although electricity has since been restored to nearly 75% of those impacted.
Particularly in Quang Ninh and Haiphong, Typhoon Yagi has left a trail of destruction with power outages and telecommunications breakdowns. According to reports, industrial parks and factories in Haiphong are scrambling to recover. “Everyone is scrambling to make sites safe and stocks dry,” said Bruno Jaspaert, head of the DEEP C industrial zones.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited Haiphong on Sunday and approved a $4.62 million aid package to support recovery efforts. Yagi has also damaged vast areas of agricultural land, with nearly 116,000 hectares of rice fields impacted.
Before making landfall in Vietnam, Yagi had already caused havoc in the Philippines, where it killed at least 20 people, and in southern China, where three more died. Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, linked Yagi’s intensity to climate change, said, “Warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel the storms, leading to increased wind speeds and heavier rainfall”.
The typhoon weakened into a tropical depression on Sunday but not before triggering catastrophic landslides, including one in Hoa Binh province, where a family of four was killed. In another tragic incident, a landslide in the Hoang Lien Son mountains took the lives of six people, including a newborn and a one-year-old child.
In total, Yagi damaged nearly 3,300 homes and more than 120,000 hectares of crops, with northern Vietnam bearing the brunt of the storm’s devastation. According to recent research, Typhoons like Yagi are intensifying faster and staying longer over land due to the effects of climate change.
Storms like Yagi are “getting stronger due to climate change”, said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore. This is primarily “because warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel the storms, leading to increased wind speeds and heavier rainfall,” he added.
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