At least 49 dead, dozens missing in Vietnam bridge collapse

Sep 26, 2007, 13:56 GMT

Hanoi - At least 49 construction workers were killed and dozens more were missing in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta when a section of a 2.7-kilometre bridge they were building collapsed Wednesday morning, police and local media said.

As darkness fell, rescuers were preparing to work overnight to get to several trapped workers buried under a mountain of reinforced concrete and twisted steel, officials said.

'At least nine people are trapped in the rubble. We can hear them calling to us,' said Duong Van Dep, a police official on the scene of the disaster in Vinh Long province, 170 kilometres southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.

More than 200 workers were on the 74-metre-long section of the Can Tho Bridge when it collapsed at about 8:30 am, sending tons of concrete tumbling at least 30 metres to the banks of the Hau River, officials said.

By Wednesday evening, the death toll had climbed to 49 people including bodies pulled from the rubble and those who died of their injuries in hospital, according to Dep

Hundreds of police, soldiers and volunteers had joined the rescue effort, according to Le Van Ut, deputy director of Vinh Long provincial police.

'We have mobilized three cranes, many ambulances and two speedboats to carry injuring people across the river into the nearest hospitals,' Ut said Wednesday.

'We have to cut the concrete structure into smaller parts and then use the cranes to lift them,' he said. 'But it's a very difficult job because the concrete slabs are too heavy even for the cranes.'

At least 100 workers were pulled alive from the mountains of concrete and steel and rushed to hospital, according to national Vietnam Television (VTV).

The section of the bridge that collapsed was over the muddy banks of the Hau River, not over the river itself, officials said.

Anh Manh Hung, head of one of the construction teams on another part of the bridge, witnessed the collapse, which began with what he said was a loud cracking sound.

'The whole sky was covered in clouds of dust and we could hear the screams of the workers,' Hung told local newspaper Tuoi Tre. 'Block after blocks of concrete fell on top of the workers. It was a horrible scene.'

Health officials appealed for students and soldiers nationwide to donate blood to be sent to the area of Vietnam's largest construction disaster in years.

Construction on the 343-million-dollar Can Tho Bridge, touted as South-East Asia's longest cable bridge, began in 2004 with Japanese funding and was slated for completion next year.

The bridge was designed to offer an alternative to river ferries that now carry some 87,000 passenger and 20,000 cars daily across the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, between Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces.

No cause for the collapse has been named but investigators were looking into whether supporting scaffolding might have been too weak or removed too early. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has ordered an immediate investigation.