The coastal province is normally affected by saltwater intrusion into rivers inthe dry season and erosion along the sea, rivers and canals.
It has had more than 20 strong winds that flattened or blew off the roofs ofmore than 80 houses, injured one person and damaged nearly 1,000ha of rice sofar this year.
It has suffered erosion on 60 occasions along a total of 3,400 metres of land,with Ke Sach and Cu Lao Dung districts and Vinh Chau town being the worstaffected.
The provincial People’s Committee has allocated 5.3 billion VND (220,000 USD) to KeSach to cope with its erosion along embankments and riverine islands and 3.1billion VND (130,000 USD) to Long Phu district for riverbank erosion in Song Phungand Phu Huu communes.
The province has built saltwater prevention sluices and erosion preventionembankments, and plans two more coastal erosion prevention projects in VinhChau town at a cost of 143 billion VND (6 million USD).
In the first eight months of this year the province took various measures tocombat saltwater intrusion, including warning farmers not to grow a latewinter-spring rice crop in some localities to avoid a shortage of irrigationwater at its end.
Vuong Quoc Nam, deputy chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, said theprovince would have human resources standing by for preventing naturaldisasters, conduct more disaster-prevention drills and strengthen inspectionand penalties to prevent violations of regulations.
The local Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control,Search and Rescue and Centre for Hydro-Meteorology Forecasting will focus onforecasting high tides, dangerous weather, low pressure systems, storms, andsaltwater intrusion.
The province will work to raise public awareness of prevention and control ofnatural disasters.
It will zone residential areas and restructure agricultural production to copewith natural disasters, and relocate households in disaster-prone areas tosafer places./.