A bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by flooding yesterday as more rain fell on northern Vietnam from a former typhoon that has caused at least 59 deaths in the Southeast Asian nation, state media reported.
Nine people died during the typhoon, which made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday before weakening to a depression, and 50 others died during the consequent floods and landslides.
The water levels of several rivers in northern Vietnam were dangerously high.
Photo: AFP
A passenger bus carrying 20 people was swept into a flooded stream by a landslide in mountainous Cao Bang Province yesterday morning. Rescuers were deployed, but landslides blocked the path to where the incident took place.
In Phu Tho Province, rescue operations were continuing after a steel bridge over the engorged Red River collapsed yesterday morning. Reports said 10 cars and trucks along with two motorbikes fell into the river. Three people were pulled out of the river and taken to the hospital, but 13 others were missing.
Pham Truong Son, 50, told VNExpress that he was driving on the bridge on his motorcycle when he heard a loud noise. Before he knew what was happening, he was falling into the river.
“I felt like I was drowned to the bottom of the river,” Son told the online newspaper, adding that he managed to swim and hold on to a drifting banana tree to stay afloat before he was rescued.
Typhoon Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit Vietnam in decades when it made landfall on Saturday with winds up to 149kph. It weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday, but the nation’s meteorological agency has still warned the continuing downpours could cause floods and landslides.
A landslide on Sunday killed six people including an infant and injured nine others in Sa Pa, a popular trekking base known for its terraced rice fields and mountains.
Overall, state media reported 21 deaths and at least 299 people injured at the weekend.
Skies were overcast in the capital, Hanoi, with occasional rain yesterday morning as workers cleared the uprooted trees, fallen billboards and toppled electricity poles. Heavy rain continued in northwestern Vietnam and forecasters said it could exceed 40cm in places.
Initially, at least 3 million people were left without electricity in Quang Ninh and Haiphong provinces, and it was unclear how much had been restored.
The two provinces are industrial hubs, housing many factories that export goods, including electric vehicle maker VinFast and Apple suppliers Pegatrong and USI.
Factory workers told The Associated Press on Sunday that many industrial parks were inundated and the roofs of many factories had been blown away.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited Haiphong on Sunday and approved a package of US$4.62 million to help the port city recover.
Yagi also damaged agricultural land, nearly 116,192 hectares where rice is mostly grown.
Before hitting Vietnam, Yagi caused at least 20 deaths in the Philippines last week and four deaths in southern China.
Chinese authorities said infrastructure losses across Hainan Province amounted to US$102 million with 57,000 houses collapsed or damaged, power and water outages, and roads damaged or impassable due to fallen trees.
Yagi made a second landfall in Guangdong, a mainland province neighboring Hainan, on Friday night.
Storms such as Typhoon Yagi are “getting stronger due to climate change, primarily because warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel the storms, leading to increased wind speeds and heavier rainfall,” Earth Observatory of Singapore director Benjamin Horton said.
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