Dozens Dead, Hundreds Injured After Typhoon Yagi Pummels Vietnam

Dozens of people are dead and hundreds injured after Typhoon Yagi ripped through northern Vietnam over the weekend. The storm led to the evacuation of 50,000 people and caused heavy damage, state media reported. Leaders said it was the worst storm to hit the country in at least 30 years.

Yagi carried winds of up to 125 miles per hour. That's the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane. It left two dozen people dead in southern China and the Philippines before striking Vietnam’s northeastern coast on Saturday.

The storm has been downgraded to a tropical depression as it moves west. But Vietnamese officials said Monday that people in the country's north are not yet safe. That's because of the potential for more landslides and floods. Those have caused most of the 58 deaths so far. Vietnam's weather service forecast heavy rains and strong winds in Hanoi on Monday. That's Vietnam's capital.

Health workers cared for more than 750 people injured in the storm. And rescue crews are still searching for the missing. That includes 13 people who were swept into the Red River after the Phong Chau bridge in Phu Tho province collapsed.

Pham Truong Son is a motorcyclist who survived the bridge collapse. He told VNExpress newspaper, “I felt like I was drowned to the bottom of the river.”

Son saved himself by grabbing onto an uprooted banana tree floating downstream.

The storm forced the closing of schools in some provinces and knocked out power for nearly six million people. Three-fourths of them had power back by Monday morning. A number of factories took massive damage. Workers had to scramble to save equipment when the storm ripped sheet metal roofs off buildings.

Reflect: How can communities prepare and support each other before and after a natural disaster?