Vietnam evacuates coastal areas as storm nears

HANOI, 2 Nov 2009 Vietnam (AP)

Vietnam evacuated coastal areas Monday as tropical storm Mirinae approached after battering the Philippines, where it left 20 people dead.

Mirinae weakened as it headed over the South China Sea and was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm. It was expected to strike Vietnam's central coast sometime Monday afternoon.

Vietnamese authorities evacuated 20,000 people from coastal provinces, far fewer than they moved in advance of Typhoon Ketsana, which slammed Vietnam in September, killing 160 people.

Some 7,600 residents, mostly the elderly and children, have been evacuated from their homes in coastal villages in Khanh Hoa province, said local disaster official Phan Hoang Duong.

In the provinces of Phu Yen and Binh Dinh, north of Khanh Hoa, more than 11,000 people have been evacuated, disaster officials there said. Light rain was reported in the area Monday morning.

Both Vietnam and the Philippines are still recovering from Ketsana, which brought the Philippine capital, Manila, its worst flooding in 40 years. Ketsana and two later storms killed more than 900 in the Philippines. Some 87,000 people who fled the storms were still living in temporary shelters when Mirinae struck.

The latest typhoon left 20 dead, mostly from drowning, in six provinces. Four people were missing, disaster response officials said.

The storm did not keep the largely Roman Catholic country from paying respects to the dead on All Saints Day on Sunday. Huge crowds jammed cemeteries, with some people visiting still-flooded ones by boat.

In Rizal province, just east of Manila, villagers carrying flowers and candles paddled canoes into a rural cemetery that resembled a lake. Joel Librilla thrust his hands into the waist-high waters to feel the letters on submerged tombstones in a search for his mother's grave.

"We don't know where to light our candles," Librilla told the Associated Press Television News. "But my mother should know that this is for her."

Forecasters said they were watching a low pressure area 379 miles (610 kilometers) off the country's eastern coast over the Pacific, but it was too early to tell if it will develop into yet another storm.