On the evening of November 5, the People's Committee of Gia Lai province met with command points in the area on the response to storm Kalmaegi (storm No. 13,). The meeting was attended by Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Nguyen Hoang Hiep.
According to the forecast, at 4:00 p.m. the same day, the center of the storm was about 880km from Quy Nhon, with the strongest wind level 14 (150-166km/h), gusting to level 17. In the next 3 hours, the storm will move west-northwest at a speed of about 25km/h.
The Gia Lai Provincial People's Committee said that the plan to evacuate people in the area is more than 93,000 households with nearly 340,000 people. As of 6:00 p.m. today, the province has evacuated more than 2,200 households with nearly 7,000 people. Currently, 27 communes and wards in the eastern part of the province have not updated data on relocating people to management software.
To date, the whole province has harvested nearly 50,000 hectares of rice, more than 31,000 hectares of corn, vegetables of all kinds, more than 19,200 hectares, along with 248 tons of fish and shrimp in cages. Gia Lai currently has 283 reservoirs, of which the east of 164 reservoirs reached 48% of the designed capacity, the west of 119 reservoirs reached 76%.
At the meeting, Chairman of the Gia Lai Provincial People's Committee Pham Anh Tuan requested 7 Vice Chairmen of the Provincial People's Committee in charge of the connecting points to report on the situation of inspection and storm response. He emphasized that localities must be determined in evacuating people, ensuring absolute safety.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Nguyen Hoang Hiep welcomed the proactive approach of Gia Lai province in preventing storm No. 13.
"The province has proactively spent money to support people in evacuation, activated response scenarios higher than the warning level, demonstrating a very proactive approach in responding to storms. I support the locality to require dams to release maximum floodwaters.
Hydropower plants and irrigation lakes must release the maximum amount of water from now until tomorrow. Proactively release floodwaters first, avoid the situation of flooding downstream, and flooding upstream. If there is a flood downstream and the hydropower plant releases floodwaters in large quantities, the "Murder" will be considered and related responsibilities will be handled," the Deputy Minister emphasized.
According to the Deputy Minister, storm No. 13 is heading straight to Quy Nhon, forecast to cause heavy rain from tomorrow afternoon (November 5). When the storm makes landfall right at high tides, coastal areas are likely to be flooded 7-8 meters high.
"At around 6pm on November 6, the storm will come ashore, there will be very heavy rain and wind, so we suggest that the locality absolutely ban it, not allowing people to go out on the streets without permission," the Deputy Minister noted.
