Floods sweep away buses and collapse bridges in Vietnam as storm deaths rise to 59

A bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by floodwaters on Monday as more rain fell in northern Vietnam from an ongoing typhoon that has killed at least 59 people in the Southeast Asian country, state media reported.

Nine people died during the typhoon, which made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday before weakening into a depression, and another 50 people died during the flooding and landslides that followed. Water levels in several rivers in northern Vietnam reached dangerously high levels.

A passenger bus carrying 20 people was swept into a flooded stream by a landslide in mountainous Cao Bang province on Monday morning. Rescue teams were deployed but landslides blocked the road to the site of the incident.

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In Phu Tho province, rescue operations were continuing after a steel bridge over the flooded Red River collapsed on Monday morning. Ten cars and trucks, along with two motorcycles, reportedly fell into the river. Three people were rescued from the river and taken to hospital, but 13 others were missing.

Pham Truong Son, 50, told VNExpress that he was riding across the bridge on his motorbike when he heard a loud noise. Before he could realise what was happening, he was falling into the river. “I felt like I was drowning to the bottom of the river,” Son told the paper, adding that he managed to swim and grab onto a drifting banana tree to stay afloat before he was rescued.

Typhoon Yagi was the strongest to hit Vietnam in decades when it made landfall on Saturday with winds of up to 149 kilometres per hour. It weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday, but the country’s meteorological agency still warned that torrential rains could cause flooding and landslides.

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On Sunday, a landslide killed six people, including a baby, and injured nine others in the town of Sa Pa, a popular camping spot known for its terraced rice fields and mountains. In total, state media reported 21 dead and at least 299 injured over the weekend.

Skies were cloudy in the capital Hanoi with occasional showers on Monday morning as workers cleared uprooted trees, fallen billboards and toppled electricity poles. Heavy rain continued in northwestern Vietnam and forecasters said it could exceed 40 centimetres in some places.

At least 3 million people were initially left without power in Quang Ninh and Haiphong provinces, and it is unclear how much has been restored.

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The two provinces are industrial hubs that are home to 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 flooded and many factory roofs were blown off.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited Haiphong on Sunday and approved a $4.62 million package to help the port city recover.

Yagi also damaged agricultural land, nearly 116,192 hectares where mostly rice is grown.

Before reaching Vietnam, Yagi caused at least 20 deaths in the Philippines last week and four deaths in southern China.

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Chinese authorities said infrastructure losses across the island province of Hainan amounted to $102 million, with 57,000 homes collapsed or damaged, power and water outages and roads damaged or impassable due to falling trees. Yagi made its second landfall in Guangdong, a mainland province neighbouring Hainan, on Friday night.

Storms like Typhoon Yagi “are becoming stronger due to climate change, primarily because warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel storms, leading to higher wind speeds and more intense rainfall,” said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore. (AP) GRS GRS

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