HANOI: A typhoon that ripped roofs off homes has killed dozens of people across Vietnam and the Philippines, officials from both countries said on Monday, as a weakened storm Bualoi crossed into neighbouring Laos.

The typhoon battered small islands in the centre of the Philippines last week, toppling trees and power pylons, unleashing floods and forcing 400,000 people to evacuate.

A Philippine civil defence official said later on Monday the death toll there had more than doubled to 27, with most of the victims either drowned or hit by debris. Scientists warn that storms are becoming more powerful as the world warms due to the effects of human-driven climate change.

In Vietnam, Bualoi made landfall as a typhoon late on Sunday, generating winds of 130 kilometres per hour. At least 13 people were killed in Vietnam, while a search is ongoing for 20 others, disaster authorities said in an online update.

More than 44,200 houses were damaged, including those with roofs torn off, mostly in the central Ha Tinh province. At least 800 houses were flooded, and nearly 6,000 hectares of crops were inundated, according to the update.

Images showed corrugated metal roofs blown off buildings and household debris strewn across saturated streets in Vietnam’s coastal Nghe An province. “The wind blew my roof to the sky and then it fell down, breaking everything. I had to cover my head and rushed to my neighbour’s house to be safe,” Trinh Thi Le, 71, in central Quang Tri province, was quoted as saying by state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Powerful storms

At least nine people were killed when a typhoon-related whirlwind swept through northern Ninh Binh province early on Monday, according to the local disaster agency.

One person was killed in the province of Hue and another in Thanh Hoa, while about 20 were missing, local and national disaster authorities reported. Among those unaccounted for were nine people whose fishing boats were lost at sea after their vessels came loose from their moorings during strong winds and currents, police said.

More than 53,000 people were evacuated to schools and medical centres converted into temporary shelters ahead of Bualoi hitting Vietnam, the environment ministry said.

Four domestic airports and part of the national highway were closed on Monday. More than 180 flights have been cancelled or delayed, airport authorities said. Parts of Nghe An and the steel-producing central province of Ha Tinh were without power and schools were closed in affected regions.

Since making landfall in Vietnam, Bualoi has weakened as it moved across the border into Laos. It came on the heels of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which killed 14 people across the northern Philippines.

The country is hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, routinely striking disaster-prone areas where millions of people live in poverty. In Vietnam, 175 people were killed or went missing due to natural disasters from January to August this year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said.

Total damages were worth about $371 million, almost triple the amount of the same period in 2024, the GSO said. Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds of people in Vietnam in September last year and caused economic losses worth $3.3 billion.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2025