VIETNAM
VNExpress-Apr 7
Residents living along a river in Can Tho City in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta had to rush out of their houses on Friday as erosion sank into the river bank, sweeping away the street at their front yards.
“People had to evacuate quickly, taking children, elders and furniture out of their houses,” a local named Nguyen Thi Le said.
She said the authorities started building an embankment to prevent erosion on this bank section of the O Mon River the other day and everything seemed to be just fine back then.
Now erosion took away an area that stretches 54 meters (177 feet) long, 12 meters wide, causing three houses and a parking garage in Thoi An Ward of O Mon District to subside and have cracked walls.
Can Tho irrigation authorities said they have built an embankment to prevent erosion along the O Mon River since August last year and the project has been half-finished.
They just started work at the eroded section in Thoi An by driving stakes into the river bed before the incident took place.
In April last year, Dong Thap Province in the delta declared a state of emergency as the Tien River, a tributary of the Mekong, was threatening to engulf more than 200 houses.
The declaration of Dong Thap came just one week after erosion spread 50 meters inland along more than 160 meters along the Vam Nao River in the nearby An Giang Province, sending 16 houses into the river.
According to Vietnam’s agriculture ministry, the Mekong Delta, the country’s fruit and rice basket, loses 500 hectares of land to sea and river erosion every year.
It is estimated that by 2050, the lives of one million people in the delta will be directly affected by the catastrophe. The Ministry of Construction last year submitted a proposal to the central government to build concrete barriers to protect 44,800 families in the region from serious river erosion.
