By the end of the day, the city had over 60 flooded areas, some nearly 1 meter deep, turning many central streets into "rivers." Many parents and students struggled to find their way home in the rain and wind, with some families forced to leave their children at school overnight. Even late into the night of September 30th, many people remained helplessly stranded on the roads.
Earlier, the Northern Meteorological and Hydrological Station warned on the morning of September 29th that Hanoi would experience heavy to very heavy rain, accompanied by tornadoes, lightning, and strong gusts of wind. However, the response from the authorities was surprisingly slow. It wasn't until noon on September 30th, when many streets were already submerged, that the Hanoi Department of Education and Training issued a notice instructing flooded schools to proactively prepare learning plans. This notice came too late, as by the time it was issued, parents and students were already stranded on the streets or at school. Images of parents and students trudging through the rain and wind, shared on social media, fueled outrage over the lack of proactive response to the emergency.
Notably, even on October 1st, when the rain had stopped and the floodwaters had largely receded, students in many schools were still forced to stay home due to a rigid directive issued earlier. This reality reveals a gap in urban governance and emergency response: forecasts were made, risks were anticipated, but the administrative response mechanism remained passive and inflexible. This serves as a wake-up call regarding an outdated management mindset in the digital age: a large city cannot operate with a "wait-and-see" mentality, but needs to rely on a modern management model with early warning, rapid response, and clearly defined responsibilities.
Lessons learned from the flooding incident show that the decision to suspend classes or switch to online learning needs to be designed as a pre-planned response scenario, similar to the regulation on suspending classes due to severe cold temperatures below 10°C in the North. There cannot be a rigid regulation for every situation, but school principals can be empowered to flexibly choose: in-person teaching, online learning, or suspension, depending on the local situation. In the context of digital transformation, organizing online learning during natural disasters and floods is feasible, provided the education sector prepares scenarios and infrastructure in advance.
Flooding caused by heavy rains may be a natural disaster, but the scenes of students and parents struggling in chaos over the past few days are a man-made disaster, the consequence of a slow response from the government. A modern city cannot allow its citizens to be helpless amidst such storms. This lesson demands that Hanoi, and more broadly, major cities in Vietnam, urgently change their governance mindset, becoming proactive instead of reactive, flexible instead of rigid, and acting early instead of waiting.
Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/hay-hanh-dong-som-thay-vi-cho-doi-post815855.html
Comment (0)