DAK LAK, Vietnam — DAK LAK, Vietnam (AP) — Typhoon Kalmaegi brought fierce winds and torrential rains to Vietnam on Friday, killing at least five people and leaving widespread damage across the country’s central provinces, days after the powerful storm battered the Philippines and left scores dead or missing.
As floodwaters receded, recovery work began in battered towns and industrial zones, with local authorities and residents clearing debris and repairing roofs across central Vietnam.
Five people were killed — three in Dak Lak and two in Gia Lai provinces — while three others remained missing in Quang Ngai, according to state media. Six people were injured. Fifty-two houses collapsed and nearly 2,600 others were damaged or had their roofs blown off, including more than 2,400 in Gia Lai alone. Power outages affected more than 1.6 million households.
In the Philippines, where Kalmaegi made landfall earlier this week, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a state of national emergency on Thursday as the country braced for another potentially powerful storm, Typhoon Fung-wong, known locally as Uwan.
The weather bureau said Fung-wong could expand to an estimated 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) in diameter before making landfall late Sunday or early Monday in northern Aurora province, potentially affecting the densely populated capital region of Manila.
Kalmaegi left at least 188 people dead and 135 missing in the Philippines, according to the Office of Civil Defense, displacing more than half a million people. Nearly 450,000 were evacuated to shelters, and over 318,000 remained there as of Thursday.
In the hard-hit central Philippine province of Cebu, 139 people died, mostly in floodings. Villagers mourned their dead on Friday, including at a basketball gym turned funeral parlor where relatives wept before a row of white coffins bedecked with flowers and small portraits of the deceased.
Jimmy Abatayo, who lost his wife and nine close relatives to the typhoon, was overwhelmed with sorrow and guilt as he ran his palm over his wife’s casket.
“I was able to swim. I told my family to swim, you will be save