Donald Trump will get a first-hand view of the damage that increasingly powerful storms are wreaking on low-lying coastlines when he flies to Danang, Vietnam to join national leaders at the showpiece Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum this weekend.
The central city was struggling to contain floodwaters unleashed by the country’s deadliest typhoon this year. Typhoon Damrey has killed at least 106 people since coming ashore earlier this week, with at least 25 more missing and 197 injured.
The flooding confronted authorities with a high-stakes juggling act of hydraulic control points, as they were forced to release water from “dozens of dangerously full reservoirs,” Reuters reported. The authorities were making “vigorous efforts to avoid flooding around Danang, which will host Trump, China’s Xi Jinping, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, among Asia-Pacific leaders at this week’s summit.”
The finely balanced diplomatic, political, and human security priorities at stake recalled the mixed performance of authorities in Houston earlier this year, where some neighbourhoods complained they had been sacrificed when reservoirs were forced to release water, and others suffered uncontrolled releases of toxins from local industry.
Vietnam’s misery was put in grim perspective by the recent memory of heavy monsoons that killed more than 1,200 people, and affected some 40 million, in south Asia earlier this year.
