Unprecedented floods have unfolded in South-Central Vietnam: the amount of rainfall has exceeded all historical norms. In less than 24 hours, major rivers broke decades-old records: the Dinh River surpassed the mark from 1986, the Kilo River exceeded the peak of 2009, and the Ba River broke the record from 1993.
Local hydropower plants were forced to release water, which only increased the destructive power of the disaster. The situation was especially severe in Dak Lak Province, where in Son Hinh, from November 15th to November 21st, more than seventy-three inches of rainfall fell — an abnormal amount even for the rainy season. The water came so rapidly that people had to break through the roofs of their homes and climb onto them to escape the rising flood.
Social media was filled with desperate pleas for help. Some families spent up to thirty hours on rooftops. In Dak Lak alone, sixty-three people died. Nationwide, the number of victims reached 98, and another ten people went missing, according to the Department of Dyke Management and Disaster Prevention as of November 26th.
In Khanh Hoa Province, in Thai-Nha Trang, the water rose to between thirteen and sixteen feet. In Cat Tien District of Lam Dong Province, residents were completely cut off from the outside world, and authorities delivered food and essential supplies by boats and specialized equipment.
The floods caused enormous damage to infrastructure and agriculture: nearly one point two million consumers were left without electricity, and two sections of national highways were closed due to landslides. More than four hundred houses were destroyed, over two thousand were damaged, and more than two hundred thousand were flooded. About two hundred twenty-two thousand acres of rice and other crops were destroyed, fish farms were wiped out, and about nine hundred twenty thousand head of livestock and poultry were lost.
To handle the aftermath, the Ministry of Defense deployed more than forty-two thousand service members and more than one thousand two hundred units of equipment, including ships, boats, specialized vehicles, drones, generators, and pumps.
The media are increasingly using terms such as record-breaking, abnormal, and historic to describe the floods, and experts explain this rapidly increasing abnormality of such events by warming and rising atmospheric humidity. But almost no one is taking into account one factor that is now making the rains truly extreme. Dr. Egon Cholakian explained this factor in detail in his video report.
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