Typhoon Yagi hits Vietnam with torrential rains, killing almost 60 as vehicles and a bridge are swept away

Hanoi, Vietnam—  A bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by flooding Monday as more rain fell after Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Vietnam, causing at least 59 deaths in the Southeast Asian country and disrupting businesses and factories in the export-focused northern industrial hubs, state media reported. Nine people died when the typhoon made landfall Saturday before weakening to a tropical depression, and at least 50 others have died in the consequent floods and landslides, state media VN Express reported. The water levels of several rivers in northern Vietnam were dangerously high.

A passenger bus carrying 20 people was swept into a flooded stream by a landslide in mountainous Cao Bang province Monday morning. Rescuers were deployed but landslides blocked their path.

In Phu Tho province, rescue operations were continuing after a steel bridge over the engorged Red River collapsed Monday morning. Reports said 10 cars and trucks along with two motorbikes fell into the river. Three people were pulled out of the river and taken to the hospital, but 13 others were missing.

Pham Truong Son, 50, told VNExpress that he was driving on the bridge on his motorcycle when he heard a loud noise. Before he knew what was happening, he was falling into the river. “I felt like I was drowned to the bottom of the river,” Son told the newspaper, adding that he managed to swim and hold on to a drifting banana tree to stay afloat before he was rescued.

Dozens of businesses in Haiphong province hadn’t resumed production by Monday because of the extensive damage to their factories, reported state media Lao Dong newspaper. The report said that the roofs of several factories were blown apart while water had seeped into industrial units, damaging finished goods and expensive equipment. Some companies said they still didn’t have electricity on Monday and it would take at least a month to be able to resume production.

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

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

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

On Sunday, a landslide killed six people including an infant and injured nine others in Sa Pa town, a popular trekking base known for its terraced rice fields and mountains. Overall, state media reported 21 deaths and at least 299 people injured from the weekend.

Skies were overcast in the capital, Hanoi, with occasional rain Monday morning as workers cleared the uprooted trees, fallen billboards and toppled electricity poles. Heavy rain continued in northwestern Vietnam and forecasters said it could exceed 15 inches in places.

Yagi also damaged agricultural land where rice is mostly grown.

Before hitting Vietnam, Yagi caused at least 20 deaths in the Philippines last week and four deaths in southern China.

Chinese authorities said infrastructure losses across the Hainan island province amounted to $102 million, with 57,000 houses collapsed or damaged, power and water outages and roads damaged or impassable due to fallen trees. Yagi made a second landfall in Guangdong, a mainland province neighboring Hainan, on Friday night.

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,” said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

The strengthening of storms due to the changing climate is not a problem limited to one region. Scientists have warned for years that virtually every major body of water is warming, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, fueling more powerful and unpredictable weather phenomena and threatening human population centers across the globe.