By DPA
Hanoi : At least 38 construction workers were killed and dozens more were missing Wednesday in Vietnam’s southern Mekong Delta when a section of a 2.7-km bridge they were building collapsed, police said.
Rescuers were racing to get to several trapped workers buried under reinforced concrete and steel, using saws and pickaxes to try to break through. Three large cranes have been brought in to lift larger slabs of concrete.
“At least nine people are trapped in the rubble,” said Duong Van Dep, a police official on the scene in Vinh Long province, 170 km south-west of Ho Chi Minh City. “We can hear them calling to us.”
More than 200 workers were on the 74-metre-long section of the Can Tho Bridge when it collapsed at about 8.30 a.m. Wednesday, sending tonnes of concrete tumbling at least 30 metres to the banks of the Hau River, officials said.
The death toll of 38 includes bodies pulled from the rubble and those who died of their injuries in hospital, Dep said.
At least 100 workers were pulled alive from the mountains of concrete and steel and rushed to hospital using handmade stretchers and any available vehicles, national Vietnam Television reported.
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 newspaper Tuoi Tre. “Block after blocks of concrete fell on top of the workers. It was a horrible scene.”
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.
It was designed to offer an alternative to river ferries that now carry about 87,000 passenger and 20,000 cars daily across the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, between Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces.