Storm hits Philippines, heads to Vietnam
Source: Agencies |
November 2, 2009, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A TROPICAL storm roared toward Vietnam yesterday after battering the Philippine capital and surrounding provinces, leaving 20 people dead in a region still soggy from three recent storms.
Typhoon Mirinae weakened yesterday as it headed over the South China Sea. It was expected to strike Vietnam's central coast around noon today.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered residents to begin evacuating high-risk areas of five coastal provinces and ordered Vietnamese fishermen in the South China Sea to seek shelter immediately.
The two countries are still recovering from Typhoon Ketsana, which brought the Philippine capital, Manila, its worst flooding in 40 years and went on to kill more than 160 people in Vietnam in late September.
Ketsana and two later storms killed more than 900 in the Philippines. Some 87,000 people who fled the storms were still living in temporary shelters when Mirinae struck.
The latest storm left 20 dead, mostly from drowning, in six provinces across the Philippines. Four people were missing, disaster response officials said.
The storm did not keep the many Roman Catholics from paying respects to the dead on All Saints Day yesterday.
In Rizal province, just east of Manila, villagers carrying flowers and candles paddled canoes into a rural cemetery that resembled a lake.
Joel Librilla thrust his hands into the waist-high waters to feel the letters on submerged tombstones in a search for his mother's grave.
"We don't know where to light our candles," Librilla said. "But my mother should know that this is for her."
Typhoon Mirinae weakened yesterday as it headed over the South China Sea. It was expected to strike Vietnam's central coast around noon today.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered residents to begin evacuating high-risk areas of five coastal provinces and ordered Vietnamese fishermen in the South China Sea to seek shelter immediately.
The two countries are still recovering from Typhoon Ketsana, which brought the Philippine capital, Manila, its worst flooding in 40 years and went on to kill more than 160 people in Vietnam in late September.
Ketsana and two later storms killed more than 900 in the Philippines. Some 87,000 people who fled the storms were still living in temporary shelters when Mirinae struck.
The latest storm left 20 dead, mostly from drowning, in six provinces across the Philippines. Four people were missing, disaster response officials said.
The storm did not keep the many Roman Catholics from paying respects to the dead on All Saints Day yesterday.
In Rizal province, just east of Manila, villagers carrying flowers and candles paddled canoes into a rural cemetery that resembled a lake.
Joel Librilla thrust his hands into the waist-high waters to feel the letters on submerged tombstones in a search for his mother's grave.
"We don't know where to light our candles," Librilla said. "But my mother should know that this is for her."
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