Typhoon Narra never needed to come ashore to do damage. By Monday it was stalling over the Beibu Gulf — the Gulf of Tonkin — dumping days of rain on northern Vietnam and China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
China relocated about 54,000 people, including 8,087 moved into emergency shelters, state broadcaster CCTV said. Fifteen rivers rose past warning levels. Video from Chongzuo showed brown floodwater covering roads and low-rise buildings; rescuers in rubber boots used boats to pull people out of Ningming county. Beijing activated a Level IV national emergency response, the lowest of four tiers, and sent a working group to Guangxi. More heavy rain is forecast through Wednesday for Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Fujian.
In Vietnam, days of rain killed one person — a resident of Thai Binh commune in Lang Son province, whose home was hit by a landslide, according to the Vietnam Disaster and Dyke Management Authority. More than 4,300 households were displaced. Lang Son and Cao Bang recorded 236 to 300 millimeters of rain in the 24 hours to Monday morning. Flooding reached Quang Ninh, home to Ha Long Bay, disrupting tourism, fishing, and transport. Authorities said the storm cut power to nearly 55,000 families and destroyed more than 10,000 hectares of rice and other crops.
Forecasters described Narra, Vietnam’s Storm No. 4 and China’s 19th typhoon of the year, as lingering offshore rather than slamming the coast on Monday. Some Vietnamese forecasts still expected it to drift toward southern Guangxi later in the week and weaken. Either way, the rain was already the story: saturated hills, swollen rivers, and a stretch of the Sino-Vietnamese border on flood watch at the same time.
