About OFDA 2

Fisherfolk are the most vulnerable population at risk of death, damage to property and loss of livelihood from tropical storms and typhoons in Vietnam.  Every year fisherfolk loose their lives and fishing boats are damaged, keeping coastal families in poverty and hunger.
Moreover, every few years, severe storms cause major loss of life of fisherfolk.  For example, in 1996 over 600 fisherfolk died in a near-shore tropical storm off Thanh Hoa Province; and in 1997 over 3,000 fisherfolk died in Typhoon Linda off Ca Mau Province.
Presently, there are approximately 120,700 fishing boats operating out of all of the coastal provinces of Vietnam; from Quang Ninh Province in the North to Ca Mau Province in the South.  Almost all of these fishing boats are small family owned businesses operated by the members of one family.  The loss of any one fishing boat is a tragic occurrence, since many men and women from the same family all lose their lives.  This creates women headed households without working age man.  Such households are the poorest in Vietnam and have little hope of overcoming poverty and hunger.
For enhanced safety at sea, fisherfolk who work near-shore fishing grounds up to 100 Km offshore of coastal Vietnam need enhanced early warning of quickly developing tropical storms and fast moving typhoons.  These tens of thousands of fishing boats are under-powered and can not outpace fast developing and moving storms.  The result is that entire fishing fleets can be caught at sea with no time to reach safe havens to protect themselves against the open ocean dangers from storms and typhoons.
Project VIE/97/002 – Support to the Disaster Management System in Vietnam is a UNDP funded project being implemented by the Standing Office of the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.   The project has begun work to improve the capacity of local government to give early warning of rapidly developing near-shore tropical storms and fast moving typhoons.
The project has assisted five northern provinces with emergency storm warning station equipment consisting of forty meter high towers atop which are placed emergency warning lights.  Also provided to each warning station is storm warning hydromet equipment able to measure wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric pressure, temperature, and rainfall.
All five stations now collect information on coastal storm conditions and automatically transmit measured coastal storm conditions by modem to provincial and to central government storm and typhoon warning officials of the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control (CCFSC) and Provincial Committees for Storm and Flood Control (PCSFC).  This information is also sent to the Disaster Management Unit for input to DMU website which shows the storm information in real time.
Based on the results achieved by the MARD UNDP Disaster Management Unit (DMU) project on its effort to help fisherfolk and people in the coastal provinces of Vietnam, the Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) of the Government of the United States of American has committed to UNDP to grant US$1,440,000 to build a weather radio and pager based coastal storm and typhoon early warning service for all of Vietnam . 
In addition, Project VIE/97/002 has been recommended by UNDP to execute the project which has already been approved by OFDA.
To capitalize on this opportunity, the project will have to be extended in scope by using the grant of US$ 1,440.000 from OFDA through the UNDP.  In addition to the immediate objectives in the project document, one more objective will be added to the project document:
Objective 5: Implement a weather radio and pager based coastal storm and typhoon early warning service for coastal provinces of Vietnam; and implement grassroots storm and typhoon preparedness training for fisherfolk at the commune and village level on how to understand the early warnings, and the best practices to take to protect themselves against storms and typhoons.