According to the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting, Typhoon Parma made landfall on October 4 and has become the tenth typhoon in the region this year.

At 4pm on October 4 the eye of Typhoon Parma was 19.3 north latitude and 119.8 east longitude, about 890km away from the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelagos. Strong wind speeds were recorded at 103kph, with gusts up to 230kph.

Earlier, a committee official announced that storm Ketsana has left 163 Vietnamese dead, 616 injured and 17 still missing, destroyed 21,429 houses and blew the roofs off 258,306 others. Flooding has also damaged 5,280 classrooms, 12,604 clinics and some Communal People’s Committee offices.

Up to 35,741ha of rice and 44,013ha of cereal crops have been inundated and a large number of roads and bridges have been damaged.

The Central Highland and central provinces are concentrating efforts to overcome the aftermath of the disaster with priority given to looking for the missing, providing food and medicine to flood victims, repairing damaged roads and restoring traffic to the isolated areas.