Nu Village: Every inch of land holds a source of pain.
Báo Tuổi Trẻ•12/09/2024
This is a story from Nu Village, Phuc Khanh Commune, Bao Yen District, Lao Cai Province.
The vacant stare of Mr. Hoang Van Thoi after the pain of losing loved ones. After the flash flood, Mr. Thoi lost his mother, wife, and three children - Photo: NGUYEN KHANH
The flash flood that occurred in Nu Village on the morning of September 10th buried everything. The entire village, with its 37 stilt houses nestled beside the fields, is now just a muddy wasteland. Somewhere beneath the thick layer of mud, a villager could be lying.
The flood destroyed everything.
The first bodies recovered from the mud in Lang Nu village on the morning of September 11th were those of five members of Hoang Van Thoi's family. The man, over 30 years old, wept beside the makeshift coffins constructed from old, cracked, moldy planks that hadn't yet been smoothed. Thoi's former home was on the other side of the field, opposite the village of 37, which had been swept away by the flood. His old house had collapsed due to a landslide, so during the storms, he had taken his wife and children to his mother's house to sleep. On the fateful night of September 9th, Thoi slept in his old house. The next morning, hearing a rumbling sound like dynamite blasting rocks, he ran out of the house only to see a vast expanse of mud and water. The stream rushed, rocks rolled, and house pillars crashed against each other with a deafening roar. "Everything's gone! My family of seven is now just me… I only hope to find my child and my brother's child. One is one year old, the other is only two…" Thoi said, then collapsed onto the tiny coffin, sobbing. In the same village as Mr. Thoi, Mr. Hoang Ngoc Diep only arrived home on the afternoon of September 10th. Mr. Diep works in Lao Cai city and had been out of contact with his family for several days, so he risked driving his motorbike through dozens of mudslides to get home. Upon reaching the village, Mr. Diep's legs trembled as he saw his beloved house reduced to a pile of mud. He lost five family members, with only one nephew miraculously surviving. Yesterday afternoon, September 11th, soldiers found his mother buried in the mud a few dozen meters from their house. Mr. Diep clenched his teeth to hide his tears and stretched a tarp over his mother to protect her from the rain. Without a home, the funeral was held coldly and without music by the edge of the field. The Lang Nu rice paddies, where a stream used to meander, were now devastated by mud. The stream's water remained thick and turbulent. Everywhere lay scattered corrugated iron roofs and house pillars; every few steps you stepped on a motorbike. An excavator belonging to someone from another village, which had been parked in the hamlet, was swept away by the flood for hundreds of meters, completely crushed. Mr. Sam Van Bong's truck was also crumpled up like a piece of scrap paper by the flood. At this point, finding anyone unharmed was considered a stroke of luck.
"We'll probably have to leave the village."
Mrs. Truong Thi Mung has been married into the Nu Village family for 30 years, and she has never witnessed such a terrifying flood. "It exploded into the sky, swirling up into clumps wherever it went. By this point, you couldn't see anything, only earth!" Mrs. Mung exclaimed. That morning, she woke up to the loud sound of the stream. She climbed the hill behind her house and saw the raging floodwaters. She ran to the community center, where four other villagers were already there. They heard a thunderous roar, and rocks, earth, and trees were thrown into the air. All five of them shouted to each other to run, but after only a short distance, the floodwaters reached the community center's courtyard. The woman, wiping away tears, ran frantically with her neighbors to help the victims . She also hoped to quickly find her mother-in-law and two missing grandchildren. Her fields and gardens were gone, and her house was no longer sturdy. Mrs. Mung went to sleep at a neighbor's house, hoping the rain would stop. But it seemed that fate had no mercy on the people of Nu Village. The rain continued to pour down all day, and the muddy streams in the mountains behind the village threatened another landslide. Village head Hoang Van Diep hasn't dared to sleep at home for days. His entire family has evacuated, and he's been busy with village affairs while also urging his neighbors to temporarily stay in safer houses. "The mountains are still high, and with this rain and wind, the water in the streams will flow out even more! We'll probably have to leave the village! We can't stay because we don't know if there will be another landslide or flash flood. We just hope to receive resettlement assistance so we can settle down and make a living," Mr. Diep said.
The damage was exceptionally large.
As of 5 PM on September 11th, the death toll in Lang Nu village had risen to 34, with 61 people still missing. Mr. Dang Xuan Phong, Secretary of the Lao Cai Provincial Party Committee, stated that this was the largest natural disaster in the province's history, both in terms of the number of deaths and missing persons. "We are developing the most effective and safest search and rescue plan. In this very difficult area, with its fragmented terrain, we will restore the necessary conditions in order of priority. We will focus on search and rescue operations, prioritizing the search for those still missing. Alongside the search, we are also preparing for the funerals of the victims," Mr. Phong said. Military Region 2 has deployed 300 soldiers to the Phuc Khanh commune area, establishing a field command post in Lang Nu village. Of these, 100 soldiers will search along the Nu stream from the Chay River inwards, and 200 soldiers will directly search the landslide area. Lieutenant General Pham Hong Chuong, Commander of Military Region 2, and Secretary of the Lao Cai Provincial Party Committee Dang Xuan Phong directly supervised the operation.
Overwhelmed with emotion, anxiously awaiting news of loved ones.
Three women, grieving the loss of loved ones, embraced each other and wept bitterly - Photo: NGUYEN KHANH
On the afternoon of September 11th, in the intensive care unit of Bao Yen District General Hospital (Lao Cai), Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim recounted that early on the morning of September 10th, she and her daughter were sleeping in their newly built flat-roofed house when they heard a very loud explosion, like a bomb or mine blast. "When I opened my eyes, I found myself blown out of the house, surrounded by water, buffaloes, pigs... I felt my arm and realized it was broken. I called out to my daughter everywhere but couldn't find her. I only heard the sound of rushing water, so I tried to reach out to find her, but my broken arm prevented me from getting far. After a while, luckily, my daughter knew how to swim, so she didn't sink but managed to crawl out of the mud and sit on a plank, calling out to me: 'Mom, save me!' I heard her, quickly turned around, and tried everything to reach the plank..." Ms. Kim recalled. According to Ms. Kim, at that time, some passersby noticed her but saw her lying still, so they thought she was dead. However, at that moment, perhaps seeing the child crying, people hurriedly tried everything to pull the plank in. When rescuing the child, they saw that the woman's hand was still waving, so they released an electric wire to pull her up. Her left hand was not broken, so she was able to grab the wire and was pulled up. "Even now, thinking back, I'm still very scared," Ms. Kim said. Ms. Kim choked up as she recounted how more than a dozen relatives and family members living around her house had died or gone missing in the flash flood and have not yet been found. Along with that, the entire house and livestock of the family were also destroyed and swept away by the flood. In the bed next to her, Ms. Kim's daughter, N., also suffered multiple injuries, her face was swollen, and she had a continuous high fever of 39.5°C. Mr. Ha Son Giang (Ms. Kim's husband) said that he woke up early that day to check the water level in the stream, and after a loud explosion, he saw mud and floodwater rushing down very strongly, so he quickly ran to the high hill nearby and managed to escape in time. According to Mr. Giang, everything happened very quickly; within just 2-3 minutes of the loud explosion, mud and rocks swept everything away. Immediately afterward, he and a few neighbors searched along the stream and rescued three people, taking them to the hospital. "My whole family was incredibly lucky, and perhaps it was because my daughter had been playing at her grandfather's house and been allowed to swim in the pool that she learned to swim, surfaced from the mud, and cried out, leading to her rescue," Mr. Giang said. Lying opposite Ms. Kim's hospital bed was six-year-old Hoang NL, also rescued with a diagnosis of multiple injuries. Sitting beside her, Ms. Hoang Thi Thanh (52 years old) looked at her granddaughter, wiping away tears, and said that her grandmother, parents, and older brother were all swept away by the flash flood, and she didn't know if they had been found yet. According to Ms. Thanh, her house is also in Nu village, but at the beginning of the hamlet, so she was fortunate not to be affected by the flash flood. By the afternoon of September 10th, representatives from Bao Yen District General Hospital stated that they had transferred 9 seriously injured patients to Lao Cai Provincial General Hospital for further treatment. Ten patients remain under treatment at the hospital. Whenever their loved ones are mentioned, despite the pain from their injuries, the victims choke back tears because they have yet to receive any information about their relatives.
Comment (0)