The death toll from severe flooding in Vietnam has climbed to 90, with 12 people still missing, the environment ministry said on Sunday, as the country grapples with the aftermath of days of torrential rain and landslides across multiple provinces.
South-central Vietnam has been battered by relentless rainfall since late October, plunging major tourist hubs and rural communities into chaos. Popular destinations such as Nha Trang were submerged last week, while landslides swept across highland routes leading to the Da Lat tourist centre, cutting off access and trapping residents.
Dak Lak, a mountainous province hit hardest by the disaster, recorded more than 60 of the confirmed deaths since 16 November. Tens of thousands of homes were inundated, and several villages remain inaccessible.
Mach Van Si, a 61-year-old farmer from Dak Lak, described how rising waters forced him and his wife onto their sheet-metal rooftop, where they remained stranded for two nights. “Our neighbourhood was completely destroyed. Nothing was left. Everything was covered in mud,” he told AFP.
According to the environment ministry, four communes in Dak Lak were still underwater on Sunday. The scale of agricultural devastation has been particularly severe: more than 80,000 hectares of rice and other crops have been ruined across five provinces, while more than 3.2 million livestock and poultry have been killed or swept away.
Authorities have deployed helicopters to drop aid into communities isolated by landslides or impassable roads. Tens of thousands of emergency personnel have been mobilised to distribute clothing, water-purification tablets, instant noodles and other essential supplies, state outlet Tuoi Tre News reported.
In southern coastal Khanh Hoa province, two suspension bridges were washed away last week, leaving many households cut off. Transport disruption remains widespread. Sections of national highways are still blocked due to floods or landslides, and parts of the railway network remain suspended, the ministry said.
More than 129,000 electricity customers were still without power on Sunday, after outages affected more than a million people at the peak of the disaster.
The environment ministry estimated economic losses across the five worst-affected provinces at $343 million (€297 million).
Vietnam has faced a series of destructive weather events this year. Between January and October, natural disasters left 279 people dead or missing and caused more than $2 billion in damage, according to the national statistics office.
The country routinely experiences heavy rainfall during the June–September monsoon, but scientists warn that human-driven climate change is intensifying extreme weather events, increasing both their frequency and severity.
