Quang Ninh residents strive to search for and rescue victims of a house collapse on July 28 (Photo: VNA)
The costs of flood damage following the heaviest rains in four decades in northern coastal Quang Ninh province have exceeded 1 trillion VND (46 million USD), local authorities said on July 30.
Nguyen Dinh Hoa, Chief of the Office of the provincial steering board for flood and storm prevention and search and rescue, said rainfall in Ha Long city and Cua Ong ward of Cam Pha city surpassed 900 millimetres in the last four days though the annual total average there is around 2,000 millimetres.
Quang Ninh did not expect climate change impacts could lead to such a high rainfall when building local drainage systems, Hoa added.
Deluge triggered by the historic downpour killed 17 people while six others went missing and 19 houses collapsed. Floods also inundated nearly 4,000 houses and schools, over 880 seafood cages covering 200 hectares of water surface, and more than 1,000 hectares of rice and other crops.
A number of coal exploitation and processing factories had to halt their operations. They also suffered damage of up to 500 billion VND (23 million USD).
Hoa said the provincial authorities are prompting post-flood recovery, noting that irrigation reservoirs are still under control and localities housing these facilities are making reports every hour so as to deploy timely relief in case of reservoir ruptures.
Since July 29, the provincial Party Committee has called for support from organisations and individuals to address deluge consequences. Forty-four organisations have pledged over 25.5 billion VND (1.17 million USD) in aid for Quang Ninh so far.-VNA
