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    October 13, 2011

Floods Kill 9 in Vietnam, Threaten Thai Capital

   VOA News
   Photo: AP
   Houses are submerged by flood water in southern Mekong Delta province
   of Long An, Vietnam, October 13, 2011.

   Authorities in Vietnam are reporting nine more deaths in flooding that
   has swept through the entire Mekong basin, bringing the death total in
   that country to 43 people, mostly children.
   In Thailand, where more than 280 have died, residents were forced to
   abandon their homes in the central city of Ayutthaya, where a historic
   temple is inundated.

   [People wade through their flooded village of wat sukran tharam in
   Ayutthaya, Thailand, October 13, 2011. (Reuters)]

   Workers in Bangkok were piling sandbags around buildings and along
   river banks ahead of expected severe flooding there.
   The floods in Vietnam are that country's worst in a decade. Officials
   say the waters have submerged nearly 70,000 homes, made roads
   impassible and forced the closure of hundreds of schools.
   Bhupinder Tomar, head of the International Federation of the Red Cross
   operations in Hanoi, told VOA that the country's rice farmers have also
   been devastated.
   "The biggest damage has been, as you can imagine, this being the rice
   production bowl of Vietnam, the biggest damage has been to economic
   livelihood and the losses to crops, both standing and planted, has been
   tremendous," Tomar said.

   "In fact about 7,000 hectares of rice crop has been lost completely,
   and total hectares lost has been about 30,000, which means about,
   roughly 60,000 families have been affected by these losses so far," he
   added.
   Similar losses are being reported in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.
   In Ayutthaya, residents carried their belongings through waist-deep
   water as they headed for the safety of higher ground.

   Local resident Boonasa Kongsangbut said the road to his house is
   completely covered in water. "My house is there, about five kilometers
   from here," he said. "The road can't be used now, if I don't leave now,
   no one can rescue us.''
   Officials say 61 of Thailand's 76 provinces have been hit by the
   flooding, affecting more than 8 million people.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

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