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Killer Tropical Storms in Vietnam Seen as Eerily Routine

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Back-to-back tropical storms left at least 28 people
   dead in Vietnam over the past week, raising fears climate change has
   brought the Southeast Asian country a spike in severe weather.
   Vietnam lies in one of the world's five "cyclone centers" and receives
   an average of 4.3 storms and at least three floods per year, market
   analysis firm Indochina Research and Consulting estimates. Five other
   tropical storms have approached Vietnam so far this year.
   "The problem isn't so much a little more damage this year or a little
   less damage this year," said Adam McCarty, chief economist with Mekong
   Economics in Hanoi, "The problem is that it's trending upwards and this
   is a climate change problem."
   Even in a 2011 report on the country, the U.N. Food and Agriculture
   Organization said typhoons, which have winds higher than those of
   tropical storms, "tend to occur more frequently."
   The country of 97 million people is now one of the most "hazard-prone"
   countries in the world, according to the Climatelinks.org database
   operated by the U.S. Agency for International Development. It should
   expect higher temperatures, increased "intensity of extreme weather
   events" and a rise in sea levels, Climatelinks says.
   Tropical storm Linfa had killed at least 21 and left 14 others missing
   as of Sunday as it crossed central Vietnam. The second storm, Nangka,
   hit the same region Wednesday. Twenty-eight people were reported dead.
   Storms this month have damaged at least 25,000 houses and 84,000
   hectares of cropland, local media report. They struck an agricultural
   zone known for rice, coconuts and tropical fruit, often grown in
   low-lying areas that are likely to flood.

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