As Hurricane Sandy
lashes the East Coast of the United States with wind and rain, Southeast Asia
is dealing with the trail of death and damage from a powerful storm that has
killed at least 43 and lest 30 people missing in the region over the past few days.
Tropical Storm Son-Tinh
was moving northeast along the northern Vietnamese coast on Monday after
tearing the roofs off hundreds of houses and breaching flood defenses
overnight, the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.
Son-Tinh was at
typhoon level when it thumped into northern Vietnam late Sunday with winds as
strong as 133 kilometers per hour (83 mph). It left three people dead and two
injured, according to an initial estimate from the Office of the National
Search and Rescue Committee reported by (VNA).
More than a 1,300
rescue workers and soldiers have been deployed to work with local authorities
on search and rescue efforts in the aftermath of the storm, VNA said.
Helicopters were
on standby for a search and rescue mission for an oil rig with 35 people on board
that became disconnected from its towboats miles out at sea amid strong waves
generated by the storm, according to VNA.
And five people
were missing Sunday after winds from Son-Tinh sank an engineering vessel near a
cargo terminal in Sanya, a city on the southern Chinese island of Hainan,
China's state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
Son-Tinh is
expected to gradually weaken over the course of Monday, regional weather
agencies said. At least 260,000 people in Vietnam had been relocated to safer
areas as it approached Sunday.
The storm had
already killed 27 people when it swept across the central Philippines during
the second half of last week, causing flash floods and landslides, according to
the Philippine National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. Nine
people remain missing, the council said Monday.
East Asia is
buffeted for several months a year by heavy storms that roll in from the
western Pacific Ocean. In August, a big typhoon, named Bolaven, killed more
than 60 people on the Korean peninsula
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