Two bodies are found on October 3 inside a pickup truck that had been buried in mud by a landslide in Lao Cai Province since September 29.
At around 2 am, the remains of Hoang Van Dinh, 37, and Hoang Duc Giang, 35, were discovered inside a crushed pickup truck that had been buried in mud since September 29. The vehicle, completely deformed, was pulled from the debris at 5 am. The third man, Phung Van Tuan, 45, has not yet been located.
According to authorities, Dinh, a manager at Tu Tren-Nam Xe Hydropower Plant, had been driving Giang and Tuan along National Highway 279 when the group lost contact at about 7 am on September 29. CCTV footage showed the truck in Minh Luong at 7.56 am, minutes before a 100-metre-wide landslide hit at 8 am, severing traffic in the area.
After days of searching, rescuers located the vehicle yesterday, which was buried beneath mud and boulders, pinned under a large rock. Excavators and dozens of personnel were mobilised to dig through the site.
Lao Cai is among the provinces hardest hit by Storm Bualoi. By 6 pm on October 2, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment reported 49 deaths, 16 missing, nearly 170,000 houses damaged, 80,000 hectares of rice and crops inundated, and economic losses exceeding VND 12,700 billion (about USD 504 million).
