Many houses in Quang Ngai were damaged by typhoon Ketsana.

Previously, Quang Ngai’s Party leader Pham Dinh Khoi blamed the province’s severe damage caused by typhoon Ketsana on inaccurate forecasts by the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting, but the center and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) both rejected the claim.

Khoi said the typhoon directly hit Quang Ngai but the forecast bulletins only informed the storm would hit a vast area from Thanh Hoa to Quang Ngai. Forecasting bulletins always said that the storm’s eye would hit Da Nang and Quang Nam, not Quang Ngai.

According to Khoi, thinking that the danger to Quang Ngai would be limited and a little later, preparations were not as urgent as in other provinces.

Chief of the Quang Ngai’s Steering Board for Flood and Storm Control Truong Ngoc Nhi said: “We don’t mean to blame somebody but to learn instead from the experience in order to cope with future storms”.

“People have died, houses have collapsed already. It is unnecessary to find who is wrong and who is right but it is more important to deal with losses and stabilise the live of the local residents,” Nhi added.

Nhi said weather bulletins released by Quang Ngai’s Hydrometeorology Centre were more specific and accurate than those of the National Centre for Hydrometeorology Forecasting because “information was filtered” to serve Quang Ngai only.

According to Nhi, based on the forecast made by the National Centre for Hydrometeorology Forecasting, the province planed to move part of the families who lived in dangerous areas on September 28 and the remaining on September 29.

However, as the local Hydrometeorology Centre warned that Ketsana might attack Quang Ngai so the province decided to move most of the people who lived in dangerous areas on the night of September 28 while the storm hit the province on September 29. “Otherwise, losses would have been bigger,” Nhi said.

Nhi, who is also vice chairman of Quang Ngai province, asked weather forecasting bulletins to give more detailed information about the rainfall and the threat of flood, instead of general information like “heavy rain or medium rain.”

In an interview with VietNamNet, deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dao Xuan Hoc said typhoon Ketsana caused the most serious losses for Vietnam so far for three simple reasons – it’s was stronger, larger and floods were higher than ever before.

Hoc said floods rose fast and subsided quickly and killed many people.

According to him, the government was very active and timely in instructing central provinces to cope with typhoon Ketsana.

Regarding Quang Ngai, Hoc said that at 7am on September 29, several hours before Ketsana attacked Quang Nam and Quang Ngai, Quang Ngai just moved a small number of people out of the dangerous areas.

However he dismissed question regards where the National Centre for Hydrometeorology Forecasting were to blame, saying: “It is not the right time to talk about this case”.

He said typhoon Ketsana hit a vast area and its radius was several hundreds of kilometers. “So we quarrel about the storm eye for what?” he said.

Hoc said that the National Centre for Hydrometeorology Forecasting did a good job this time but he suggested there are areas of its bulletin that could be amended.

(VFEJ, 9/10/2009)