At Least 11 Dead and 33 Injured After Typhoon Bualoi

Typhoon Bualoi killed at least 11 people and injured another 33 after hitting Vietnam.

The storm made landfall on the evening of Sunday, Sept 28, the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press and The New York Times reported. Prior to Bualoi’s arrival, nearly 30,000 people evacuated as a precaution and four airports were shut down, resulting in the cancellations or delays of hundreds of flights.

The storm also caused 2 million homes to lose power, which authorities are working to restore.

“This typhoon is one of the strongest to hit the areas it swept through in the last two decades,” said Huy Nguyen, a local weather forecaster, per the the Times. “It created widespread damage because it stayed inland for many hours — between six and 11 hours — after making landfall.”

Vietnam News Agency (VNA), the country’s official news outlet, said that as of Monday, Sept. 29, an additional 13 people remained missing, while nearly 43,000 homes were damaged as a result of the storm. Additionally, 167 schools and 12 medical facilities were destroyed.

The news agency said that Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has urged administrators and agencies to ramp up recovery efforts and “extended his condolences to the families of the victims and asked local leaders to focus on search and rescue efforts as well as aftermath recovery.”

Meanwhile, the Hoa Binh hydropower reservoir, upon a directive from the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, is expected to release water to regulate the floodwaters on Monday, VNA reported. 

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii said, per the Times, that Bualoi carried maximum sustained winds of 90 mph.

Before reaching Vietnam, Bualoi, then a tropical storm, was responsible for 10 deaths in the Philippines, according to the Times and Reuters.

According to VNA, 11 fishermen from two boats were caught in the typhoon off the coast of Cua Viet, leaving one boat, which carried four, to sink while the other boat with seven people became disabled. Eight fishermen were eventually rescued while three remain missing as search efforts continue.

“I’ve witnessed many storms, and this is one of the strongest,” Nguyen Tuan Vinh, 45, of Nghe An province, told Reuters. 

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Bualoi has since weakened into a tropical depression bound for Laos, the news agency reported.

The storm comes days after after Super Typhoon Ragasa struck the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong. According to the Associated Press, the storm left 28 people dead before it made landfall in China and then degraded in Vietnam last Thursday, Sept. 25.