Hope fades for survivors in Vietnam bridge collapse

Sep 27, 2007, 12:58 GMT

Hanoi - Hope was fading to find survivors in a massive bridge collapse that killed at least 56 people in southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta as rescue workers worked in the rain to clear tons of concrete and twisted steel, officials said Thursday.

Rescuers pulled five more bodies from the site of the bridge collapse Wednesday in Vietnam's Mekong Delta overnight but hundreds of rescuers searched in vain on Thursday, according to Nguyen Mong Tua, deputy police chief in southern Vinh Long province.

'We no longer think there are any survivors down there under the rubble,' Tua said. 'No one can survive under thousands of tons of concrete for so long.'

More than 250 construction workers were on the 100-metre-long section of the Can Tho Bridge project when it collapsed Wednesday morning, sending tons of concrete tumbling at least 30 metres to the banks of the Hau River.

So far, at least 56 bodies have been found and about 100 people hospitalized.

Rescuers were frantically trying to cut through concrete slabs to reach workers they could hear calling out on Wednesday.

'We aren't hearing any voices of victims anymore,' Tua added. 'We have no more hope for survivors, but doctors are standing by at all times in case someone is found alive.

Some 500 police, military, doctors and volunteers were working in the rain Thursday to move the rubble, but Tua said it could take one or two weeks for workers to move the large slabs of concrete.

Some officials estimated about two dozen workers were still unaccounted for, raising the probable death toll even higher in Vietnam's worst construction disaster in years.

No cause for the collapse has been named but investigators were looking into whether supporting scaffolding might have been too weak and heavy rains had loosened the ground beneath it.

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 passengers and 20,000 cars daily across the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, between Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces.