QUẢNG NINH – All cruise ships in the northern Quảng Ninh Province have been banned from sending tourists offshore to visit Hạ Long Bay from 6am today.

This has been done to ensure safety as storm Mirinae is approaching the northern provinces.

Storm Mirinae, the first to strike Việt Nam this year, battered Tonkin Gulf this morning, including Bạch Long Vĩ, Cát Hải, Cô Tô and Vân Đồn islands of Quảng Ninh Province and Hải Phòng City.

The People’s Committee of Quảng Ninh Province ordered the owners of 473 cruise ships to move the vessels to safe shelters and to anchor them down tightly to avoid any damage that might be caused by the storm.

About 2,000 tourists on Cô Tô Island were moved to safety ashore as of 5pm yesterday.

However, 647 tourists, five of whom are foreigners, are still on the island. Cô Tô Island District authorities asked tourist agencies to provide accommodation to the tourists.

Đặng Huy Hậu, standing Vice-Chairman of Quảng Ninh Province’s People’s Committee, asked relevant agencies to urgently contact more than 40 offshore ships and boats to ask them to move to safe shelters, while evacuating households in areas prone to floods and landslides, especially those in mountainous areas.

The preparations to deal with the storm must be completed before 4pm today, he said.

According to the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting, the storm was centred at about 19.5 degrees north and 108.5 degrees east, about 200km to the southeast off Thái Bình and Ninh Bình provinces at 8am today.

The storm is expected to move in a west-northwest direction in the next 12 hours, at a speed of up to 20kmph and hit the Red River Delta region this evening before weakening into a tropical depression.

The north-eastern and northern mountainous areas are expected to experience heavy rains this evening. — VNS