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.
A small hut is left after most of a house has been buried under rocks and soil following heavy rains in house in Hoang Su Phi District, Ha Giang Province, July 21, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quang Vinh. |
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.
Another child, two years of age, from Bac Quang District, drowned amid the floods.
Also on Tuesday 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 has experienced flooding the past three days due to heavy rainfall, between 100 and 300 mm a day. Rainfall of 180 mm or more a day is considered heavy.
Rainfall from 7 p.m. Sunday to 7 p.m. Monday in Ha Giang Town was measured at 347 mm, the heaviest per day since 1961, said Hoang Phuc Lam, deputy director of the National Center for Hydrometeorology and Forecasting.
Prolong rains and flooding have caused 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.
Nguyen Manh Thang, chief of Ha Giang Town People's Committee, said: "The city has never been as severely flooded. We’re busy calculating the damage."
Flooding almost bury cars on a street in Ha Giang Town, the capital of Ha Giang Province, July 21, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Xuan Hoa. |
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.