More than 100 hours after the two-day downpour from September 29 to 30, floodwaters have receded in many parts of Hanoi, and daily life is gradually returning to normal. Yet, in the Mieu Nha residential area of Xuan Phuong Ward, hundreds of homes remain submerged, while the main road leading in is still over a metre deep, leaving traffic paralysed.
Although Hanoi has seen clear skies and blazing sunshine for days, floodwaters in this area remain slow to subside. Most cars and motorbikes are forced to turn back, while others are either abandoned by their owners as they wade through the water or hauled across the deep-flooded stretch by tow services.
In Mieu Nha’s narrow alleys, hundreds of homes stay underwater; most residents have fled, leaving only a few, mainly the elderly or childless families, clinging to their flooded houses.
By the afternoon of October 4, water levels in several sections of Alley 6, Mieu Nha, still ranged from 1 to 1.3 metres deep.
The deep flooding has submerged many household belongings, while garbage and wastewater from nearby canals and dumps have also flowed into the neighbourhood with the rising water.
Residents rely on small boats or makeshift rafts to navigate the area.
Lien’s home is one of the deepest submerged, leaving the elderly couple isolated for five days, surrounded by water that has disrupted their lives and devastated their livestock, pets, and garden.
Nguyen Duc Canh, Lien’s son, joined two neighbours to reinforce the family’s flooded pigsty. With water chest-deep, the four men struggled to catch and move the pig to higher ground, finally managing to lift it onto the mezzanine after about ten minutes, where they secured a temporary shelter for the animal during the flood.
A few houses away, 69-year-old Nguyen Thi Hue was struggling to clean up her collapsed chicken coop after the flood had struck. With no shelter left for her flock, she could only stack wooden planks together to give the chickens a temporary perch. Hue lost many chickens when floods destroyed her coop; some were swept away, others crushed. For five days, she has fed them with borrowed rice and tended the flock twice daily.
For five days, with her home flooded and without power or clean water, Ha has cooked at work, one meal for her family and another for her neighbour, 64-year-old Nguyen The Toan, as the whole neighbourhood has no way to cook.
When Ha called, Toan stepped onto his balcony and tossed down a rope; she tied the meal bag securely, and he pulled it up to his second floor.
Without power for five days, Ha’s husband removed the battery from their electric scooter to light a small bulb on the second floor, giving the family some relief at night.
At the end of the alley, 72-year-old Cao Van Hoi has lived five days without electricity or clean water, fetching buckets from neighbours each day to get by.
Nguyen Van Thang of Alley 6 said flooding was common, but power cuts were rare and brief, so he never kept backup lights. “This time, with the water so high and electricity likely out for long, I bought battery lamps,” he said.
Five days on, more than 300 households in Mieu Nha remain submerged, weary from living without power and clean water, uncertain when life will return to normal.
