Following a typhoon that has claimed at least 59 deaths in Vietnam and crippled companies and industries in the export-focused northern industrial regions, a bridge collapsed and a bus was carried away by water on Monday as further rain poured, according to official media.
Typhoon Yagi struck Vietnam on Saturday, killing nine people before it subsided into a tropical depression.
At least fifty more people perished in the ensuing floods and landslides, according to official media VN Express. Several rivers in northern Vietnam have dangerously high water levels.
In the hilly Cao Bang region on Monday morning, a landslide washed a passenger bus with twenty persons inside into a flooded creek. Rescuers were sent in, but their route was obstructed by landslides.
Rescue efforts were ongoing in the province of Phu Tho following the collapse of a steel bridge across the engorged Red River on Monday morning. Ten automobiles, two motorbikes, and a truck reportedly plunged into the river. Thirteen individuals remained missing after three were fished out of the river and transported to the hospital.
The 50-year-old Pham Truong Son told VNExpress that he heard a loud boom while riding his motorcycle across the bridge. He found himself plunging into the river before he realized what was happening.
Son told the newspaper, “I felt like I was drowned to the bottom of the river,” but he was able to swim and cling to a floating banana tree for support until help arrived.
Due to significant damage to their facilities, dozens of firms in Haiphong province had not started up again by Monday, according to the Lao Dong daily, a state media outlet.
According to the report, water had entered into industrial units, ruining valuable equipment and completed items, and the roofs of other facilities had been blown aside. A few businesses said on Monday that they were still without power and that it would be at least a month before they could start up again.
On Monday, the provinces of Haiphong and Quang Ninh remained without power due to fallen electrical poles. Both provinces are industrial centers, home to several manufacturers that export goods, such as VinFast, a manufacturer of electric vehicles, and Pegatrong and USI, suppliers to Apple.
While initial estimates indicate that about 100 businesses were impacted by the storm, with losses totaling millions of dollars, the newspaper claimed. Authorities are currently evaluating the damage to industrial facilities.
During a visit to Haiphong on Sunday, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh authorized a $4.62 million package to aid in the port city’s recovery.
With winds of up to 92 miles per hour, Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday, making it the biggest storm to batter the country in decades. Although it lessened on Sunday, the nation’s meteorological office issued a warning that landslides and flooding might result from the ongoing rains.
A landslide in the town of Sa Pa, a well-known hiking base renowned for its terraced rice fields and mountains, on Sunday left six people—including an infant—dead and nine others wounded. According to official media, the weekend resulted in at least 299 injuries and 21 fatalities.
Monday morning in Hanoi, the capital, the skies were cloudy with sporadic rain while laborers cleaned fallen electrical poles, billboards, and uprooted trees. Northwest Vietnam is still seeing a lot of rain, with experts predicting up to 15 inches in certain areas. Yagi also harmed farmland, mostly used for rice cultivation.
Yagi killed four people in southern China and at least twenty in the Philippines before striking Vietnam.
Ten2 million worth of infrastructure was lost on the island province of Hainan, according to Chinese officials. This included 57,000 dwellings that were either destroyed or collapsed, power and water shortages, and roads that were either damaged or blocked by falling trees. On Friday night, Yagi made ashore for the second time in Guangdong, a province on the mainland that borders Hainan.
According to Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, storms like 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.”
