Super Typhoon Noru made landfall on Vietnam’s northeastern coast on Saturday, home to significant manufacturing operations for domestic and foreign companies, Reuters reported. The storm was followed by the risk of flooding and landslides.
Managers and workers at industrial parks and factories in Hai Phong, a coastal city of two million people, said they had no power and were trying to salvage equipment from factories with tin roofs that had been blown away, with more rain expected.
“People are trying to make the sites safe and dry out the inventory,” said Bruno Jaspaert, head of the DEEP C industrial zone, which houses factories of over 150 investors in Hai Phong and the neighboring province of Quang Ninh.
The walls of a factory of South Korea’s LG Electronics in Hai Phong collapsed.
LG Electronics, a major home appliance and consumer electronics manufacturer, said there was damage to its production facility but no casualties among its employees. The company said a warehouse containing refrigerators and washing machines had been flooded.
“Extensive damage,” said Hong Sun, Chairman of the Korean Business Association in Vietnam, when asked about the storm’s impact on Korean factories in coastal areas.
Fallen power poles left Hai Phong and Quang Ninh without electricity on Monday. These provinces are industrial hubs, home to numerous factories exporting goods, including Apple suppliers Pegatron and USI.
Authorities are still assessing the damage to industrial parks, but initial estimates suggest nearly 100 businesses were damaged by the storm, with losses amounting to millions of dollars, according to CBS News.
Meanwhile, AFP reported, citing domestic media, that at least 59 people had been killed in Vietnam in landslides and floods triggered by Typhoon Noru.
Noru is Asia’s strongest storm of 2024 so far
This typhoon is the strongest storm in Asia so far in 2024, and it made landfall on Vietnam’s northeastern coast on Saturday, after wreaking havoc in China and the Philippines.
Aside from the loss of life, the damage to infrastructure and the economy is immense.
“The Vietnamese government said the typhoon disrupted power and telecommunications in some parts of the country, mainly in Quang Ninh and Hai Phong in the northeast,” AFP wrote.
The meteorological agency warned on Monday of more flooding and landslides, noting that rainfall ranged from 208 mm to 433 mm in some areas of the region in the past 24 hours.
“Flooding and landslides are damaging the environment and threatening the lives of the people,” the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said in a report.
Homes in some areas of Thai Nguyen and Yen Bai were almost completely submerged in the early hours of Tuesday, with residents waiting on their roofs for rescue, according to Singapore’s CNA channel.
In Hanoi, residents along the Red River were also partially flooded and forced to evacuate. Phan Thi Tuyet, a 50-year-old woman living near the river, said she had never experienced such high water levels.
“I lost everything, everything is gone. I had to go to higher ground to save my life. We couldn’t take any belongings. Everything is submerged.”
Noru weakened into a tropical depression on Sunday, but some areas of the port city of Hai Phong were submerged under half a meter of water and left without power.
In Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 70km from the city along the coast, the disaster management agency said 30 boats had sunk after being hit by strong winds and high waves.
The agency said the storm also destroyed nearly 3,300 homes and more than 120,000 hectares of crops in northern Vietnam.
According to a study published in July, storms in the region are now forming closer to the coast, intensifying more rapidly, and lingering over land for longer due to climate change.
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