A community training course in disaster response, organised by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has been held in the central city of Hue, finishing on March 3.

The course forms part of a USAID-funded project to educate people in central Vietnam to deal with natural disasters in coastal areas, carried out by the American Red Cross.

During the course, the trainees were equipped with basic knowledge on how to respond to natural disasters, fires, floods and search and rescue work by taking part in a series of realistic exercises.

The project will help 64 communes in the eight central coastal provinces of Quang Nam , Quang Ngai, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen to establish community-based disaster risk management systems.

It will also help to raise the capacity of Vietnam ’s Red Cross and Red Cross branches at community level.

So far over 590,000 people have benefited from the training programme./.