STORY: :: A Vietnamese restaurant owner breaks down
after losing everything to Typhoon Yagi
:: September 9, 2024
:: Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
:: Nguyen Thi Thom, Restaurant owner
“I have lost everything. There is nothing left. When I look around, people have also lost all they had, just like me. Even though I am sad I can’t talk about it because it is not just me who is suffering. I can only try to recover from this.” // “I am left empty handed because I borrowed money to invest in this place. I have not yet paid back the old debt, and now this has happened so I definitely have nothing left. I did not want to cry but I could not help it because it hurts so much.”
The restaurant owner said she borrowed money from friends and relatives after the pandemic to invest in restaurant renovations. About a week before the typhoon hit, she said she had purchased equipment for events that cost around $120,000.
The typhoon made landfall on Saturday on Vietnam’s northeastern coast, home to large manufacturing operations of domestic and foreign companies. It was downgraded to a tropical depression on Sunday but the meteorological agency warned on Monday of further floods and landslides.
Forty-nine people have died and 22 are missing, mostly because of landslides and floods triggered by the typhoon, the Vietnamese government said.
