A bridge across a river collapsed amid heavy rainfall in northern Vietnam on the morning of Sept. 9, according to local officials.
The downpour was caused by a weather system recently downgraded from a typhoon, which caused landslides, flooding, power outages, and at least 59 deaths.
The steel bridge was across the Red River in Phu Tho Province.
Rescue operations were continuing amid local reports that 10 cars and trucks along with two motorcycles had fallen into the river.
Three people have been pulled out of the river and taken to the hospital, but 13 others are still missing.
Pham Truong Son, 50, told VN Express that he was riding his motorcycle across the bridge when he heard a loud noise and then plummeted into the river.
“I felt like I was drowned to the bottom of the river,” he told the newspaper, adding that he managed to swim and hold on to a drifting banana tree to stay afloat before he was rescued.
Several motorcycles and cars fell into the river, according to initial reports, and three people who had been fished out of the river during the rescue operation were taken to the hospital.
Typhoon Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit Vietnam in decades when it made landfall on Sept. 7 with winds of up to 92 miles per hour.
Nine people died when the typhoon first hit the country on Sept. 7 before weakening to a tropical depression, and at least 50 more people perished in the resulting landslides and floods, VN Express reported.
The water levels of several rivers in the north of the country remain dangerously high.
On Sept. 8, six people, including a child, were killed in a landslide that also left nine others injured in Sa Pa town, a popular trekking base known for its terraced rice fields and mountains.
Elsewhere, a bus carrying 20 people was swept into a flooded stream by a landslide in mountainous Cao Bang Province. Rescuers were deployed to the area, but landslides blocked their path.
Skies were overcast in the capital, Hanoi, with some rain on the morning of Sept. 9 as workers cleared fallen trees, dislodged billboards, and toppled electricity pylons.
Heavy rain continued in northwestern Vietnam, and forecasters said levels could exceed 15 inches in places.
Initially, at least 3 million people were left without electricity in Quang Ninh and Haiphong provinces, and it remains unclear how much has been restored.
The two provinces are industrial hubs, housing many factories including electric vehicle maker VinFast and Apple suppliers Pegatron and USI.
Factory workers said that many industrial parks were flooded and that the roofs of many factories had been blown away.
Some companies said they still didn’t have electricity on Sept. 9 and that it would take at least a month to resume production.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited Haiphong City on Sunday and approved a package of $4.62 million to help the port city recover.
China and the Philippines Also Hit
Before hitting Vietnam, the typhoon killed at least 20 people in the Philippines last week and caused four deaths in China.Chinese authorities said infrastructure damage across the Hainan island province amounted to $102 million, with 57,000 houses destroyed or damaged, power and water outages, and roads damaged or impassable because of fallen trees.
