Floods sweep away bus and bridge collapses in Vietnam as storm death toll rises to 59

HANOI, Vietnam — A bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by flooding on Monday as more rain fell after a typhoon in Vietnam killed at least 59 people in the Southeast Asian country and disrupted businesses and factories in the export-oriented northern industrial hubs, state media reported.

Nine people died when Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday, before weakening to a tropical depression. At least 50 others died in subsequent flooding and landslides, state media VN Express reported. 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. Rescuers were called in, but landslides blocked their path.

Rescue operations continued in Phu Tho province after a steel bridge over the overflowing Red River collapsed early Monday morning. Reports said 10 cars and trucks, along with two motorcycles, 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 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 hold on to a floating banana tree to stay above water before he was rescued.

Dozens of companies in Haiphong province had not resumed production on Monday due to extensive damage to their factories, state-run Lao Dong newspaper reported. The report said roofs had been blown off several factories while water seeped into industrial units, damaging finished goods and expensive equipment. Some companies said they still had no electricity on Monday and that it would be at least a month before they could resume production.

Fallen electricity poles left Haiphong and Quang Ninh provinces without power on Monday. The two provinces are industrial hubs, with many factories that export goods, including EV maker VinFast and Apple suppliers Pegatrong and USI. Authorities are still assessing damage to industrial units, but initial estimates show nearly 100 businesses were damaged by the typhoon, resulting in millions of dollars in losses, the newspaper reported.

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

Typhoon Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit Vietnam in decades when it made landfall Saturday with winds of up to 92 mph. It weakened Sunday, but the country’s meteorological agency warned that the continued downpours could trigger flooding and landslides.

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

Skies were overcast in the capital Hanoi, with occasional rain Monday morning as workers cleared uprooted trees, toppled billboards and fallen power poles. Heavy rain continued in northwestern Vietnam, with meteorologists saying some places could have received more than 15 inches.

Yagi also caused damage to agricultural land where rice is mainly grown.

Before Yagi reached Vietnam, at least 20 people had been killed in the Philippines and four in southern China.

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

Storms like Typhoon Yagi are “becoming more powerful due to climate change, mainly because warmer ocean waters provide more energy to power the storms, leading to higher wind speeds and heavier rainfall,” said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.