2. Local Institutions Response to 1999 Flood Event in Central Vietnam

2.1 November 1999 Flood Event

The 1-6 November 1999 flood is one of the most severe flood events in Central Vietnam. The DMC reported that it affected 6 coastal provinces (from Quang Binh to Binh Dinh) and caused more than 600 deaths and missing and nearly USD 300 million loss of property. This event is said to be of greater magnitude and impact than the historic floods of 1886, 1924, 1953 and 1983.

2.1.1 Synoptic Conditions

In the latter half of October 1999, the central region experienced more than normal rainfall due to the influence of tropical storm Eve (Figure 4). Provinces from Ha Tinh to Quang Ngai had heavy to very heavy rains. These rains were the first in a series of heavy rain events that lasted from 2-3 weeks.

At 7:00 a.m. on 20 October 1999, these provinces had received from 100 mm to 470 mm of rainfall, exceeding their monthly averages. The highest recorded was in Ky Anh District, Ha Tinh province at 470 mm. Hue City recorded 289 mm rainfall.

Source: HMS-Vietnam

Floodwater levels on rivers in Quang Binh and Quang Tri provinces and downstream of the Thu Bon River (Quang Nam Province) as well as Thua Thien Hue Province reached their highest levels. The floodwater level on the Kien Giang River at the Le Thuy gauging station (Quang Binh) was at 2.05 m (above the Alarm Level II)^[5]; on the Quang Tri River at the Thach Han gauging station was at 2.69 m (above Alarm Level I); on the Thu Bon River at Cau Lau gauging station was at 1.75 m (0.35m below Alarm Level I).

From 1-6 November, the combined effect of a low pressure area over the South China Sea and the tail end of the cold front caused heavy precipitations over the central region, severely flooding provinces from Quang Binh to Binh Dinh. Figure 5 shows the band of cloudiness over Central Vietnam.

Heavy rainfall from 600 to over 1,000 mm was experienced in these provinces. Total recorded rainfalls compared to normal averages over this period at various gauging stations in the central provinces are shown in Figure 6. The rains occurred on a large scale and concentrated in a short period. In Hue City alone, mean rainfall reached 1,384 mm, the highest level in the city in 100 years since 1886.

Source: HMS-Vietnam

In Quang Tri, total cumulative rainfall recorded at Dong Ha station along the eastern coastal region of the province (Figure 7), from 1-4 November was about 800 mm, compared to the long-term average of only 100 mm for the same period. Over Khesanh station, along the mountainous region of the province, observed rainfall during this period was also above average (Figure 8).

By 2 November, rivers in the affected provinces started to overflow. River levels exceeded Alarm Level III by 0.3 to almost 3 m (Table 3). The level of the Huong River in Hue reached 5.94 m, surpassing its historic 1983 flood level by 1.06 m. All districts of Thua Thien Hue Province and many districts of Quang Tri, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Quang Binh, Da Nang, and Binh Dinh provinces were deeply inundated: 20 districts in the region were 2-4 m under water. The streets of Hue ran with water 1-3 m deep. Eleven communes in Phu Loc and Phu Vang Districts were isolated. Ten ships, 2 patrol canoes and hundreds of houses were swept away.

Uncontrollable flooding combined with landslides inflicted severe damage on roads, dykes and infrastructure. National Highway1A was 2 m under water. Transportation from the North to the South was blocked for many days. Many households lost their main food supply and income for the next 6 months until the next rice harvest in April/May. In the hilly areas, many long-term investment in pepper were lost.

Table 3: Water level (m) of rivers in Central Vietnam, 1-6 November 1999

Note: NA- not available
Source: Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control, Vietnam

2.1.2 Response by Local Institutions

Tables 4 and 5 give an account of the daily flood situation, community responses and local institution actions during the 1-6 November 1999 flood in Quang Tri and Hue. Information was obtained from CFSC documents and from interviews in the study sites.

Table 4. Community responses and local institution actions during the 1-6 November 1999 flood, Quang Tri^* (Word in italics - Action by Provincial Government Level)

Note: * for verification

Table 5. Community responses and local institution actions during the 1-6 November 1999 flood, Thua Thien Hue^*

Note: * for verification

Role of mass organizations

Table 6 summarizes the activities of mass organizations in Quang Tri in response to the November 1999 disaster, and their important role in rehabilitation.

Table 6. Activities undertaken by mass organizations in Quang Tri during the November 1999 flood

2.1.3 Flood Impacts

The impacts of the November 1999 floods were most severe, as the floods came right after harvest, at a magnitude that was unexpected. For the lowland population, the largest blow to the household economy was the loss of and damage to rice that they had stored in their houses, depriving them of both food security and main income for the year. People lost between one and five tons of rice per household. The dike and canal system was damaged which caused increased insecurity in production. The second most important source of income, animal husbandry, was badly affected. Almost all households lost pigs and poultry in the floods and in the epidemics after the floods.

In the highland, though the floods were more flash flood in character, the inundation damage was still severe and caused large losses of garden crops, such as pepper, fruit trees and cassava. The loss of income from pepper constituted the largest loss for many households. Cattle died both in the floods and of diseases after the floods, which also undermined the resource base of many households.

In Hong Ha, Aluoi District, floodwaters transported sand and stone to the productive land. Paddies were worst affected, as they were the most low-lying land. In some places, over 2 m of sand and stone settled on the land. People spent many months digging to recover their fields. Two of the 16 ha of paddy could not be recovered from the stone. Loss of paddy had the most serious long-term impact.

The loss of growing cassava had the most serious short-term impact. Most of the cassava is grown on flat land close to the river, instead of on the hill slopes as previously. Most of the 20 ha of cassava were inundated, and the roots rotted and became inedible. Cassava is normally the main source of food during the seven months between the harvest of the autumn paddy and the spring paddy. After replanting, cassava was not available again until September 2000.

Banana is another important food crop damaged by the floods. The continuous rain also caused more banana pests (yellow leaf fungi) than normal. There were very few local sources of food until the rice harvest in June. The food security situation was thus more threatened by the 1999 flood than previous floods, as the hill land does not get inundated and damaged as badly as the flat land.

2.1.4 Household Coping Strategies and Capacity to Recover

Food security

The most pressing issue that households were faced with is access to food for the next six months until the rice harvest in April/May. Relief assistance from the Government and foreign organizations, in cash and in kind, enabled local CFSCs to extend assistance during the rehabilitation and recovery period. Rice support was distributed in several batches. The first delivery was distributed equally to all. Subsequent deliveries were distributed according to classification of households, conducted at village meetings, into three groups depending on how badly they had been affected by the floods. Each household received between 150-250 kg of rice, which lasted two to three months.

The remaining period before harvest was handled with a large degree of mutual support between the households. People lent or gave food to each other. Vegetables were planted immediately with seed support from the district. Many households, especially in the lowland communes, took loans of rice to be repaid after harvest.

In Hong Ha, the Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry provided seed support for planting various vegetables and beans. Because of the large effort required to recover the paddy fields, the winter- spring crop was not planted until March. This postponed the harvest period of the summer crop until mid-October. People were worried about not being able to harvest in time before the floods, but luckily there were no major floods in this area in 2000.

Livelihoods

In the lowland communes, people have few alternative income sources to rice. Individual household efforts and the whole institutional structure are concentrated on securing the rice harvest. Recovery of rice production was supported by infrastructure investments, credit for inputs and subsidised seed from the district. People are very vulnerable to failures in rice harvest. There was hardly any surplus from rice production in 2000 because of the high production costs for drainage and replanting. Heavy rains in January and February caused inundation of the newly planted fields and people had to replant two, and in some areas even three times. The rice price in 2000 was lower than normal (1,200 VND/kg in Hai Lang). The crop in May 2001 was 30% down in quantity and quality because of heavy rains and flooding one week before harvest. It will probably take many rice harvests before people have recovered fully.

Almost all households immediately bought new piglets, either with relief grants or credit. There was however a very high level of animal epidemics after the floods. The pigs died, people invested again and the pigs died again. It took almost a year before the animal health situation had stabilised. This was despite intensive efforts by the veterinary services to vaccinate all animals after the floods. The environment was extremely polluted by manure, excrement and cadavers floating around. The army and police force helped people in a massive action to bury the animals and clean the environment.

A major part of household coping strategies in the hill land are related to securing access to land. Land available for production has decreased due to the floods and to restrictions on the use of the hill land. People used a patchwork of opportunities to supplement their paddy production. They collected firewood to sell or workied as day labourers. They borrowed from each other and used marginal areas, which are risk-prone and not meant for production.

Labour

Labour opportunities are an important part of the coping strategies of poor households. In the hilly areas, many poor households work as day labour for other households in the commune. It is easy to find work: in the rice harvest, digging fishponds, in forestry etc. The Bo River Watershed Management Board, under the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, allocated 58 ha of 172 ha designated for forest planting in 2000. (The rest is contracted to private individuals and organizations, who, in turn, contract households (also from other communes) to plant and tend the forest on a day labour basis.) Planting contracts are offered to the villages. All households in that village, who register for planting, can get a planting contract divided equally and according to labour capacity. The households who don't plant are mainly the ones who lack labour. As an advance for planting 300,000 VND/ha is offered, but people prefer one transfer of 1,068,000 VND/ha (about USD 70) later, in order to have funds for investment in something more substantial. After the floods, many people also went to work in the sugarcane areas in Thua Thien Hue province.

In the lowland areas, there are not as many day labour opportunities, except in the rice harvest, and the poor are often busy with their own rice. During the slack period between the crops, many people go to work in Khe Sanh in the rubber and coffee plantations, or migrate seasonally to take part in the coffee harvest in Dak Lak province.

Community work is not normally seen in the context of employment creation. Labour contribution to local investments is more often considered as the part that local people can contribute to infrastructure investments where the Government (and donor) contributes the fiscal support for material costs. Likewise after the floods, the Government provided material support for reconstruction and the community provided labour. In cases where labour is contracted for a salary, it is up to the construction company to hire the labour as they see fit. In many cases, migrant labourers from other provinces have been prepared to work for lower salaries than the local population.

Housing

The experience of the floods was most traumatic to the lowland population, especially to those who did not have anywhere to go when the water level rose right up to the roofs of their houses. The strong wind caused fierce waves, which made mobility difficult. A common reaction was to take out loans to repair and strengthen the houses, in order to feel less vulnerable to future floods. People with employment and a stable income obtain bank credit for housing. For the normal rural population who have less secure incomes, private loans are easier to access. These however have high interest rates and, if production after the flood is not stable, difficulties in quickly settling such debts arise. Housing assistance from the Government, the Red Cross and NGOs were extended to the most poor - the latter two supported the building of a few hundred new stable houses.

Health

There were no epidemics among people after the floods, which was impressive. The district health centre, commune clinics and the Red Cross distributed medicine and disinfectants to purify the water. The clinics provided chemicals and monitored sanitary conditions. There is however a continuing health problem because of the polluted river water, which worsened after the floods. Neither of the villages in this study have clean water systems.

Education

Education has not been seriously affected, despite significant material damage. Most families still kept their children in school, despite the difficult economic situation. The commune People’s Committee and the district Education Section jointly invested in the repair of school buildings and in the replacement of lost furniture and school materials. Teachers worked extra without pay to help pupils catch up the time they lost during the floods. Pupils shared books and helped each other to dry or replace wet books.

Table 7 lists factors that respondents said would contribute or limit their capacity to recover from disasters.

Table 7. Factors influencing capacity to recover from disasters in the study sites

Compared to lowland communities, people in hill land communes generally recovered better from the floods. They have more diverse sources of income from forest planting, minor forest products, buffalo raising and day labour. These sources of income, spread out over the year, make them less vulnerable, minimizing the need to take private loans for sustenance.

2.1.5 Initiatives by Local Institutions for Rice Production Recovery

Government

Immediately after the floods the Government made strong efforts at all levels to quickly rehabilitate production conditions and to provide possibilities for people to rehabilitate their economy. The primary strategy was to rehabilitate rice production. The water management infrastructure needed to be repaired in order to reduce risks of inundation on the lower fields and ensure irrigation on the higher fields. The district and province supported the repairs with funds for materials, and the villagers contributed labour. The most urgent infrastructure repairs have been done, but there are still major repairs and upgrading needed for long-term production security.

As soon as the floodwater receded, cooperatives and production groups held meetings to quantify losses and identify requirements for the coming production season, both for crops and animal husbandry. Seed supplies for the coming cropping season were the most urgent need. Leaders of the People's Committee and the Agriculture Section had to make several journeys to other provinces in order to secure the rice seed supply, especially since large areas had to be replanted several times. The Agriculture Section distributed seed and planting material for sweet potato, vegetables and other short-term crops. The People’s Committee plans to build the capacity of the Agriculture Cooperative to do this task.

Credit was provided to enable people to reinvest in production. The Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (VBARD) allocated 20 billion VND (approx. USD 1.3 million) of credit to Hai Lang District, which was distributed as one-year credit with 0.3% interest for rice farmers for the short-term recovery of production. The decision to emphasize the short-term needs was partly an administrative convenience matter. The process of handling individual credit applications from 15,000 households at once would have been difficult. At commune level, the procedures were further simplified by the decision to distribute credit to each family, based on area of paddy land. This meant that almost everybody did access credit, including poor households who normally would have difficulties in obtaining bank credit. It however excluded people without paddy land, such as the fishermen in Van Tri village, and a few poor households who do not have paddy.

There was an expectation of additional funds for medium-term credit, which did not materialize. Such credit would have benefited the hill land communes, as they are dependent on long-term production investments for pepper, fruit trees, cattle and fish raising. Also people in the lowland communes need support to diversify production and income generation.

Agriculture Cooperatives

Many agriculture cooperatives have input supply services. They sign a credit contract with a supply company for fertilizer, which is delivered through the cooperative to the farmers, who pay after harvest. Production inputs for the winter-spring crop were needed in December-January after the floods. The State credit was not available until March 2000. The cooperatives were able to bridge that gap by buying inputs on credit contracts for delivery to farmers.