Four people in Ha Giang Province in the northern highlands died Tuesday amid heavy flooding in the region due to prolonged rain.
A 44-year-old woman and her 15-year-old daughter were asleep in their house in Hoang Su Phi District when rocks collapsed onto the house at around 5 a.m. Authorities tried to rescue the two, but failed.
At 7 a.m., another woman and her 13-year-old daughter were buried as landslides hit their rent house in Ha Giang Town, the capital of the province. Authorities found them after several hours and rushed them to hospital, but only the 48-year-old mother survived.
Also in the morning, a truck passing a spillway in Bac Me District slid into a nearby stream with the driver still stuck inside. Authorities had deployed bulldozers to recover the vehicle, only to find the driver dead, said Cung Thi May, district chairman. The truck was transporting minerals at the time of the incident.
Ha Giang Town has experienced flooding the past three days due to heavy rains, causing traffic jams and landslides in several areas. Most streets were flooded about a meter deep, while cars could not traverse a section of National Highway 2 due to a collapsed city gate. Two cars were also swept away into the Lo River.
“The city has never been as severely flooded as now. We’re busy calculating the damage,” said Nguyen Manh Thang, chief of Ha Giang Town People’s Committee.
Trieu Son An, deputy chairman of Hoang Su Phi District, said the rain has subsided as of Tuesday and authorities were monitoring and evacuating locals from areas vulnerable to landslides and erosion.
Meanwhile in Quan Ba District, about 50 km from Hoang Su Phi, heavy rains had also brought floods and landslides that buried several structures in Thai An Hydropower Plant, pausing operations.
Several northern Vietnamese areas have seen heavy rains since Friday last week, including Ha Giang and Bac Giang Provinces, meteorologists said. More heavy rains are expected on Tuesday and Wednesday in Lai Chau, Lao Cai and Ha Giang provinces, according to the Central Steering Committee on Natural Disaster Prevention and Control.
Floods and landslides may also occur in these regions, the committee added.
Reported by Tat Dinh, Gia Chinh, @Vnexpress