Two people washed away by floods as Storm Conson brings heavy rains

On Sunday night Le Ngoc Anh, 20, of Son Tinh District, Quang Ngai Province, was swept away from near an underpass beneath the Da Nang – Quang Ngai Expressway, and as of Monday he remained missing.

But rescue units found the body of Y Ben, 53, a woman who had been swept away on Sunday in Tu Mo Rong District, Kon Tum Province.

Storm Conson had weakened into a tropical depression before making landfall Sunday.

The central region and the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum experienced downpours of 150 mm, including over 200 mm in some areas, on Sunday, and many residential areas in Da Nang City and Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces were inundated.

The Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control said the storm had caused a ship and a barge to sink, two other ships to run aground, blown away the roofs of 31 houses, and damaged 1,070 hectares of rice in the central region.

The region should expect further rains of 200 mm by Tuesday due to the connection of an intertropical convergence zone and the tropical depression which used to be Conson, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.

After Conson, the fifth storm this year over the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls East Sea, there could be six to eight more storms and tropical depressions, with two to four directly affecting Vietnam, meteorologists have warned.