Nhat Tan Peach Blossom Village, located along the Red River at the foot of Nhat Tan Bridge in Hanoi's Tay Ho District, remains desolate one week after typhoon Yagi, the most powerful storm to hit Vietnam in three decades.
The peach blossom trees, which were expected to be ready for sale in time for the Lunar New Year, which is coming in four months, now lie submerged under 3 to 4 meters of floodwaters.
Farmers are deeply concerned, as even though a few taller peach trees have survived, their roots have been waterlogged for a week, making recovery highly unlikely.
As of Sunday morning, parts of Nhat Tan's peach orchards were still submerged. This traditional craft village is renowned for its diverse varieties of peach blossoms.
Peach cultivation is a long-standing tradition in Nhat Tan Ward. Between 1990 and 1995, the area dedicated to peach farming in the ward was limited to only 34 hectares. However, after 1998, more residents began to engage in peach cultivation, expanding the area used for growing peach trees to 78 hectares.
Today, the region is home to over 800 households dedicated to peach cultivation.
The Nhat Tan peach has also earned a 4-star rating as an OCOP (One Commune, One Product) item. The OCOP rating, introduced by the Vietnamese government in 2018, aims to promote local production and business, improve people's income and living standards, and modernize agriculture and rural areas.
Even the ancient peach trees, which farmers had carefully tended with raised beds, could not escape the flooding, as the water reached up to their branches.
As a result of typhoon Yagi, Hanoi recorded the worst flooding in 20 years last week with the water in the Red River peaking at 11.3 m, leading to widespread evacuations and leaving thousands stranded and reliant on emergency aid.
A peach tree has died, with the soil around its roots eroded. According to peach growers in Nhat Tan, peach trees are at risk of dying if they are submerged for one or two days.
Nguyen Thi Nguyet, another peach farmer, uses a saw to cut down dead peach trees. She said over 200 peach trees in her garden have died. If these trees had remained healthy until the Lunar New Year, they could have been sold for VND200 million (US$8,140).
Many peach trees along the Red River were damaged by water hyacinths that floated in from the river, causing the trees to break. Peach growers had to wade through the mud to remove the water hyacinths and plant new peach trees.
Residents used tarps to create pathways through the gardens of peach, kumquat, and daisy flowers, allowing them to quickly remove dead plants after the flood and prepare the soil for the next planting season.
Adjacent to Nhat Tan Peach Blossom Village, along the Red River, lies approximately 30 hectares of kumquat trees in Tu Lien Village, Tay Ho District. Around 70% of this area was also damaged by the flooding caused by typhoon Yagi.
Kumquat growers reported that with floodwaters rising to 2 meters, most kumquat trees, also a popular Lunar New Year decoration, were completely submerged, with only a few surviving, either because they were planted on higher ground or moved in time.
According to a report from Hanoi, the city has 11,678 hectares of submerged and damaged crops, the highest among the northern localities affected by typhoon Yagi.
The typhoon made landfall on Vietnam's northern coast on Sept. 7 and passed through Hanoi later that day after entering Vietnam's waters two days earlier, packing winds of over 200 kph, equivalent to a super-typhoon.
The country's death toll from the typhoon, along with the landslides and flash floods it triggered, has risen to 292, with 38 people still missing.
