LIVING WITH FLOODS
A GRASSROOTS ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES AND IMPACTS OF TYPHOON MIRINAE
Michael DiGregorio, Ph.D.
Huynh Cao Van, M.Sc.
Introduction
Michael DiGregorio, Huynh Cao Van
On November 2, 2009, typhoon Mirinae slammed into the coast of central Vietnam killing 122 people and causing $280 million in damage to property. While typhoons regularly strike the coasts of central Vietnam each fall, the severity of this storm took both meteorologists and local disaster relief authorities off guard. With the heaviest rains far inland, coastal communities in the rice growing deltas were not prepared for the flooding that followed.
Over the next 50 years, Vietnam’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) has predicted that climate change will cause an increase in the number and severity of storms such as Mirinae. That may be true, and, in fact, many have suggested that severe storms have already begun to increase. For the people of central Vietnam, however, tropical storms have long been part of an environmental consciousness. Historically, in the late fall of each year, farmers prepare for seasonal storms, well aware that in any given year a severe storm could overwhelm them. Given this, the severity of damage and loss of life associated with typhoon
Mirinae might come as a surprise. Has climate change begun to produce storms that have exceeded the capacity of people living in the flood prone deltas of central Vietnam to prepare for and respond to storms? Or have other factors within the landscape changed to such a degree that established practices are no longer adequate?
This report proposes that, through the generation of more severe storms, climate change is creating a new disaster preparation and response equation. But this, however, is not the only equation. Vietnam is now engaged in a socio-economic development strategy that is committed to forms of economic growth that favors the expansion and development of coastal and lowland cities and towns.
Increasingly, that growth needs to come to terms with environmental constraints. As city administrators, investors, and politicians confront these limits, the primary responses have been to protect new urban development from damage through site planning and storm related infrastructure, often at the expense of existing settlements.
This study of flooding associated with typhoon Mirinae in the suburban areas of Quy Nhon city will show that residents of these areas are accustomed to seasonal flooding and have, over generations, discovered means of dealing with the associated risks and benefits they provide.
They are also aware of recent landscape transformations, including, among other things, the construction of new dams, roads, bridges, and dikes, and the infilling of floodplains for urban development. Rather than anticipated increases in the number and intensity of storms, they regard these new projects, and the failure of authorities to offer them adequate warning, as the key factors behind the severity of Mirinae’s impacts. Evidence suggests that they are correct.
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