Disasters and emergency response

The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) has agreed to provide a grant of US$11 million for a project to establish an effective water resources management system and enhance disaster response capabilities for the Nam Ngum River basin. According to the KOICA Office in Laos, the project ...

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) has forecasted a sharp rise in Mekong water levels in Kampong Cham and Kratie over the next five days. In its daily forecast, the MRC’s Regional Flood and Drought Management Centre in Phnom Penh projected an increase of more than two ...

The Defence Ministry will donate 20 mobile negative pressure cabinets to Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar to support their efforts to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. Negative pressure cabinets allow medical staff to safely collect respiratory secretions from patients infected with Covid-19. Ministry spokesman, Lt ...

The sun cast its warmest rays before dusk across the farms on Koh Pnov, one of the Mekong River islands substantial enough to survive the river’s seasonal rise and fall. Though usually drenched by the late afternoon showers of rainy season, on a bright August ...

Floods and landslides in Vietnam are reported to have left at least 102 people dead or missing, while tens of thousands of people have lost their homes to rising water. Two storms that hit central Vietnam in the first two weeks of October, Storm Linfa and Storm Nangka, ...

Rescue teams in Vietnam raced against the clock on Sunday in search for a dozen men, after a series of landslides overwhelmed an army camp.  Heavy rain has pounded over central Vietnam for more than a week, resulting in floods and landslides that have killed at least 64 people, according to the country’s disaster management authority.  “From 2 ...

Vietnam’s flood death toll rose to at least 23 and authorities said the incoming storm Nangka would dump more heavy rain on the country in the coming days. The floods also left at least 14 people missing in Vietnam’s central provinces, the government said in a ...

Elderly residents and small children clung to inflatable tyres as soldiers and police used rope lines to bring them to safety beyond rising floodwater in Cambodia’s western province of Battambang, which is expected to worsen on Sunday. Hundreds of families in three Cambodian provinces – Pursat, ...

The stay-at-home order because of COVID-19 is causing hardships for the most vulnerable in Yangon. Only one person is allowed to go out at a time and some streets don’t allow strangers to enter, causing hardships for street pedlars and gig economy workers. Most shops in ...

Myanmar’s second wave of coronavirus may have been triggered by “returnees” from neighboring Bangladesh, who brought the illness back with them when they illegally entered Rakhine state, which is now a COVID-19 hotspot, according to a senior government health official. But other experts say the evidence ...