Body of reporter found following massive floods in Vietnam

The body of a reporter has been found after he was swept away two days ago by floods triggered by a tropical depression that has claimed dozens of lives in Vietnam’s northern region.

Dinh Huu Du, 29, a reporter from the Vietnam News Agency, was standing on a bridge crossing a river in Yen Bai Province when flash floods simply swept it away, his colleague, Pham The Duyet, told local media.

Authorities in Yen Bai said on Friday that they had found the body of Du around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the bridge.

39 people are also reported missing, and that number is likely to rise in many remote areas. 

Dinh Huu Du in a file photo courtesy of his Facebook page.

As of Friday, flash floods and landslides from the tropical depression have killed at least 54 people in Hanoi, Hoa Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Son La and Yen Bai, said a report by the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control.

Two hundred houses have been destroyed and more than 30,000 have been flooded. Around 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) of rice and other agricultural crops have also been damaged, and 200,000 domesticated birds and cattle have died, the center said.

But the misery does not end there as a tropical storm forming in the East Sea has been forecast to hit China’s Hainan Island before moving to northern and central Vietnam next Monday, threatening to wreak more havoc in the region.

Vietnam has been suffering from destructive stormy weather once again this year. Floods in northern Vietnam killed at least 26 people and washed away hundreds of homes in August before Typhoon Doksuri, the strongest to hit the country in years, killed at least eight people in the central region last month.

Last year, tropical storms and flooding killed 264 people in Vietnam and caused damage worth VND40 trillion ($1.75 billion), nearly five times more than in 2015.