Typhoon Xangsane - Viet Nam

Some of you know my connection with Viet Nam and that my Brother-in law has made it his new home and married a beautiful Vietnamese woman some 40 years his junior (high-five bro). I emailed him last night about Typhoon Xangsane hitting the coast at about 1:00am their time and told him it looked like he would be safe in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon)in the south and that his wife's family would be safe in Hanoi in the North. I just received this email from him at 10:00am:

Hey David,
You are correct in your geography but it is such a huge storm and the footprint is so big, we are all getting a taste. But what we are seeing is nothing compared to what so many of our best friends have endured in Danang, many of them very poor.

We spend a lot of time there naturally because our EMW home office is in Danang and 70% of our project work stretches in the Central Highlands from Kon Tum in the south to Quang Binh in the north. It is absolute devastation there today, and we cannot get there to help our poor friends, relatives in Hoi An and fellow EMW employees. The photos coming out and verbal reports indicate it is much on the order of Andrew and Katrina.

Not a lot of lost life because the army forces them to evacuate or go to jail. But the property damage will be catastrophic....and worst of all, when you have so little to begin with, no income, no savings and no insurance, loosing your home and possessions means you have gone from extremely poor to hungry, cold, wet and destitute....with no chance of it ever changing.....like living on the edge, and then the storm just washes you over!

I have been reading wire reports and it seems that Danang has been very hard hit with several deaths reported so far, electricity and communications are out and the "streets have become rivers".

I'll update later and explain what the "EMW" is. I know that some of my readers are very familiar with VN, but how many of you know what the country is like today?