“We are worried about the embankment. We are really afraid,” 43-year-old Ma Wai told AFP on Thursday.
“When the authorities warned us over the microphone, we didn’t know where to run. Children and elderly people were crying.”
State media reported that nearly 150,000 people have been forced to seek refuge in 327 camps while nearly 28,000 are clinging on in their flooded homes.
At least a dozen people have been killed.
Tin Tun, 50, said he and his family decided they had no choice but to escape what he described as the worst flooding they had ever experienced.
“We had to flee, taking people and our animals by boat. The water was up to our waists in our house when we left,” he said.
Laos, Vietnam affected
The particularly heavy monsoon is also lashing Myanmar’s neighbours.
Laos is still searching for scores of people missing after a dam collapsed last month, wiping out entire villages and killing at least 11 — though earlier official tolls initially put the number as high as 27.
Thai, South Korean and Chinese specialists have joined the effort to find the missing.
Floodwaters from the disaster seeped into Cambodia and forced thousands from their homes.
Thailand said Thursday that seven of its northeastern provinces have been hit by flooding, affecting at least 30,000 people.
“We had to move our property, rice, our cattle and poultry,” Phung Thi Luan told AFP from a makeshift shelter in a community centre.
“There’s no road for us to get around and…there’s no electricity.”
So far this year in Vietnam, 112 people have gone missing in natural disasters, with more than 900 homes completely destroyed and tens of thousands of hectares of farmland damaged.
