The death toll from flash floods spawned by Typhoon Damrey more than doubled on Wednesday as the hardest-hit Vietnam said it had recovered the bodies of 33 people swept away in the northern mountains.
The deaths took the known toll to at least 74 in Damrey's rampage across the main Philippine island of Luzon, the southern Chinese island of Hainan - where the economic damage was estimated at $1.2 billion - Vietnam, Laos and northern Thailand.
State-run Vietnam Television said 38 people were swept away on Tuesday night as the worst floods in 40 years struck Yen Bai province, 180 km (110 miles) north-west of Hanoi, and soldiers had so far retrieved 32 bodies.
"The water rose extremely fast and we had no where to run," a woman in Yen Bai said.
The broadcaster said another person was killed by landslides in neighbouring Lao Cai province. Four died in similar torrents in Thailand while China and the Philippines each reported 16 deaths.
Despite waning after hitting land in Vietnam on Tuesday, Damrey - Khmer for elephant - still pounded wide areas with heavy rain and water spilling from a cracked dam threatened the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.
The city threw up walls of sandbags 5 metres (16 feet) high in vulnerable areas along the river, but the top official in the region said the water was seeping relatively slowly from the reservoir, which has a capacity of 2 million cubic metres.
"We are keeping eyes on the water level, but we are quite sure we can hold it," Chiang Mai Governor Suwat Tantipat told Reuters.
Vietnam has issued flood warnings after Damrey's 130 kph (80 mph) winds and 5-metre (16-foot) sea surges shattered sections of the network of sea dykes protecting a key rice growing area.
Prime Minister Phan Van Khai at a Wednesday cabinet meeting called on rescue missions to seal off the broken dykes and pump out water to help farmers finish rice harvesting.
The area in Vietnam most likely to suffer floods was the province of Ninh Binh, 90 km (55 miles) south of Hanoi, the government's Committee for Flood and Storm Prevention said.
It ordered five other northern provinces to reinforce dykes. The rains also struck Laos, where the government said it had no immediate reports of major damage.
Vietnam's dyke system, built to withstand strong gales and protect rice fields in the north, buckled under the power of winds and sea surges.
Sections crumpled in four provinces, power supplies and telecommunications were hit and thousands of homes swamped.
The government said at least 180,000 ha (445,000 acres) of rice in seven provinces were damaged.
But the typhoon did not hit the Central Highlands coffee belt further to the south and had no impact on crude oil output as Vietnam's offshore rigs are well to the south.
The government said it was rushing emergency food and supplies to devastated areas to which 330,000 evacuees returned only to find homes and rice fields under water.
Nguyen Thi Nguyet, general secretary of the Vietnam Food Association, said the government was expected to take food relief from national reserves and it would have no impact on exports.
"Rice from the region's warehouses can be used to meet the food demand," she told Reuters, adding that the region was harvesting a bumper crop this year.
The northern region incorporating the Red River Delta is Vietnam's second-largest rice growing area after the Mekong Delta in the south.
It produces about 36 percent of Vietnam's rice, used mainly for domestic consumption, and shrimp and fish farms in the area also suffered typhoon damage.
But the disruption to production will reduce supplies of vegetables and seafood to regional markets, including Hanoi, home to 3 million people where prices have already started rising.
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