May 20th was the hottest day of the current heat wave that has lasted for over one week in the central region, where residents are seeking innumerable ways to escape the blistering heat.
Temperatures soared to 40 degrees celsius at noon in Da Nang City, where residents chose beaches, parks and supermarkets to shelter from the parching heat.
Hoang Thi Tuyet, who lives on Quang Trung Street, said that her house has a corrugated metal roof and located in an alley. Her family cannot suffer the midday heat and thus spends afternoons in supermarkets or along the Han River banks.
Pham Van Dong, T20, My Khe, Xuan Thieu and Non Nuoc Beaches see tens of thousands of people flocking to bathe every afternoon.
According to management boards of Son Tra Peninsula and tourist beaches in Da Nang City, an average of more than 30,000 people are streaming to beaches everyday.
Consumption of electric fans and air conditioners has rocketed. One owner of an electronic shop in Phan Dinh Phung Street said that the number of fans and air conditioners sold have doubled or tripled above normal.
The heat has been even severer in the neighboring province of Thua Thien-Hue. Thuan An, Phu Thuan and Vinh Thanh Beaches and Huong River banks have been filled with people trying to escape the heat.
Several vegetable fields have withered under the parching heat in Quang Dien District.
Le Thi Hoa, a local farmer, said that she has to cover her cabbage field to avoid the blistering heat and drill wells and purchase pumps to draw irrigation water.
The intense hot weather has spread disease to kill hundreds of hectares of shrimp crops in Thua Thien-Hue, Quang Tri and Quang Binh Provinces.
Le Binh, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Quang Tri Province, said that officials are guiding farmers on ways to prevent their shrimps from disease.
Farmers in Quang Nam Province have stayed indoors from 9am-3pm everyday instead of cultivating the summer-autumn rice crop in their fields.
Pham Van Luan, a farmer from Dien Ban District, said that they don’t dare to go out because some people have fainted from heatstroke on the fields. Instead, several farmers have bought lights to work at night.
On May 17, a woman suffered a heatstroke and died in Quang Binh Province.
The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Da Nang City said that hydropower reservoirs have begun to release water for summer-autumn rice production from May 15-30. However, the scorching weather has lowered their water levels causing fear that there will not be enough water for farmers to sow their crops.
According to the National Hydro Meteorological Forecasting Center, the scorching weather will continue for the next two to three days in the central region.
