Death Toll in Vietnam Floods Reaches 433

The skies cleared briefly over flood-ravaged central Vietnam on Saturday, giving aid workers a chance to get food to hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes. The death toll has climbed to 433.

After a week of torrential storms that spawned the nation’s worst flooding in a century, a warm sun emerged over the seven devastated provinces that are home to 7 million people.

“We’ve got a window of opportunity to get this food and water out there,” said Eelko Brouwer of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, directing workers to load up instant noodles for distribution.

Vietnam Television showed a dozen people frantically wading in chest-deep waters to swarm a Red Cross boat carrying packets of instant noodles.

By evening, a drizzle set in again, with more rain forecast today.

In the worst-hit area, Thua Thien Hue province--home to the ancient city of Hue--257 were reported dead and 71 missing. Officials estimated that 90% of the province’s 1 million residents have been displaced.

From the air Saturday, Hue and its surrounding areas looked like a shimmering patchwork of lakes, dotted by a string of telephone poles across the horizon. Rice paddies had become coffee-brown rivers. Rooftops of flooded homes dotted the surface.

Many people were still trapped on their roofs and in trees. One man, his roof barely above water, told of how a loved one died five days ago and how he had to tie the body to a pillar in his house to keep it from drifting away.

Workers continued to labor around the clock to clear a landslide that damaged two miles of highway between Hue and Da Nang to the south. They hoped to reopen the mountain pass today to increase the flow of relief supplies to Thua Thien Hue province.

A helicopter arrived with food supplies, antibiotics and rehydration kits for Hue’s 1,100-bed main hospital that serves the region. The hospital was without electricity, food and water for three days.

Doctors and nurses performed surgery by flashlight and used rainwater to cook food for the 3,000 patients and staff members, vice director Bui Duc Phu said Saturday.

“We ran out of food on the second day of the rains, and I had to take a boat to a nearby convent to borrow [880 pounds] of rice,” he said. “But we have all survived. No one died from lack of medicine or because of care. We even delivered 60 babies.”