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| Saturday, 15 November 2003 |
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Vietnam floods kill 16, halt coffee harvest HANOI, Friday (Reuters) Floods sweeping various provinces in Vietnam in the past two days have killed at least 16 people, blocked traffic on the north-south highway and halted coffee harvesting in the Central Highlands, officials said on Friday. By Friday morning, nine people had drowned in the southern province of Ninh Thuan, three had died in the central provinces of Binh Dinh and Phu Yen and another in Quang Nam, as torrential rains since Wednesday drenched a stretch of 580 km (360 miles). "The rains stopped by Friday and flood waters are stabilising but cars and trains cannot get through," a disaster management official in Ninh Thuan told Reuters. Disaster reports showed at least 10 people were missing and parts of the railways running through the coastal provinces of Khanh Hoa and Ninh Thuan had been eroded, leaving trains stranded. Khanh Hoa is home to the Nha Trang beach tourist resort, 450 km (298 miles) northeast of Ho Chi Minh City. Unusually strong rains on Wednesday and Thursday have prevented the coffee harvest from peaking in the central highland provinces of Daklak and Lam Dong where the dry season should have started this week, a local trader and officials said. "The harvest should have peaked this week, but the rains arrived and farmers were afraid their newly picked cherries could not be dried properly so they halted picking in the past two days," said the Daklak-based trader. He added that the rains have halved the volume of fresh beans made available for export from Daklak to around 500 tonnes a day, as many growers often dry beans outdoors. The harvest in Daklak and Lam Dong, which produce around 70 percent of Vietnam's total coffee output, normally peaks from mid-November and ends in January. Vietnam is the world's top exporter of robusta, the variety widely used for instant coffee. An official in Lam Dong said traffic on the road to Phan Rang, the capital town of the coastal province of Ninh Thuan, resumed on Friday after being interrupted earlier this week. The flood-stricken central and southern provinces, which incorporates the Central Highlands coffee belt, are far from Vietnam's Mekong Delta rice basket. |
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