State media reports that dozens of people have died in Vietnam due to flooding caused by Typhoon Yagi

HANOI, Vietnam – A bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by floods Monday as rain continued to pound northern Vietnam following an earlier typhoon that left at least 59 people dead in the Southeast Asian country, state media reported.

Nine people died during the typhoon that made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday before weakening to a low pressure system, and 50 more died in the floods and landslides that followed. Water levels in several rivers in northern Vietnam were dangerously high.

A passenger bus carrying 20 people was swept into a flooded river by a landslide in the mountainous province of Cao Bang on Monday morning. Rescue workers were deployed, but landslides blocked the way to the accident site.

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

Pham Truong Son, 50, told VNExpress he was riding his motorbike across the bridge when he heard a loud noise. Before he knew what was happening, he fell into the river. “I felt like I had drowned to the bottom of the river,” Son told the newspaper, adding that he managed to swim and cling to a floating 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 of up to 149 kph. It weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday, but the country’s meteorological agency still warned that persistent rains could cause flooding and landslides.

On Sunday, six people, including a toddler, were killed and nine others injured in a landslide in the town of Sa Pa, a popular trekking site known for its terraced rice fields and mountains. In total, state media reported 21 deaths and at least 299 injuries over the weekend.

In the capital Hanoi, skies were overcast and there were scattered rains on Monday morning as workers cleared uprooted trees, toppled billboards and fallen electricity poles. Heavy rain continued in northwest Vietnam, and forecasters said rainfall could exceed 40 centimetres in places.

In Quang Ninh and Haiphong provinces, at least three million people were initially without electricity and it is unclear how many have since been restored.

The two provinces are industrial hubs with numerous factories exporting goods, including electric car maker VinFast and Apple suppliers Pegatrong and USI. Factory workers told The Associated Press on Sunday that many industrial parks had been flooded and the roofs of many factories had been blown off.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited the city of Haiphong on Sunday and approved a $4.62 million aid package to support the reconstruction of the port city.

Yagi also damaged agricultural land, about 116,192 hectares, mainly used for rice cultivation.

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

Chinese authorities said damage to infrastructure in the island province of Hainan was valued at $102 million, with 57,000 houses collapsed or damaged, power and water outages, and roads damaged or impassable by fallen trees. Yagi made landfall for a second time on Friday evening in Guangdong, a mainland province bordering Hainan.

Storms like Typhoon Yagi are becoming “stronger due to climate change, particularly because warmer oceans provide more energy to fuel the storms, leading to higher wind speeds and heavier rainfall,” said Benjamin Horton, director of Singapore’s Earth Observatory.

Copyright: NPR