Residents in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 8 built a makeshift dike with sand bags to prevent
high tides from flooding their homes. A project to tackle floods is still in the pipeline but
won’t fix the problem before Lunar New Year, which falls on February 14.

Nguyen Huu Loc is praying his street won’t flood for Tet this year.

“Last Tet, we didn’t want to go around because the water levels on the street submerged half my motorbike’s wheel,” lamented the District 8 Ho Chi Minh City resident.

Loc and his neighbors, as well as other residents in the city’s several lowland areas, regularly suffered floods caused by high river tides twice every month. They usually reach their peaks on the first and 15th days of each lunar month, which means they’ll be high on the first day of the Lunar New Year, or Tet, which falls on February 14 this year.

Loc’s hope for a dry holiday will likely go unfulfilled this year as city authorities have yet to complete several construction projects designed to prevent floods, which are expected to be worse this year than normal.

Bad to worse

The Southern Hydro Meteorological Forecasting Center has predicted that two phases of extra-high tides will hit HCMC late January and mid-February respectively. Their peaks are expected to reach the city on January 29 and on February 14.

Government statistics show that around 40 percent of the city’s total area is located below 1.3 meters above sea level, while high tides at Phu An Station on the Saigon River reached 1.56 meters last year.

Do Tan Long, head of the drainage management section at the city’s Flood Prevention Project Management Unit (PMU), said floods will submerge neighborhoods in District 8’s Ward 16 surrounded by the Ruot Ngua and Lo Gom canals for Tet.

A resident of Ward 16’s Neighborhood 5 said they could hardly drive their motorbike through the heavily flooded streets and alleys during high tides.

“This place is just like a small island surrounded by water during high tide,” he said.

A District 8 official said frequent, heavy floods were damaging Phu Dinh, An Duong Vuong and Ho Hoc Lam streets.

Residents at District 6’s Ward 10 and Binh Tan District’s An Lac Ward have also complained of the high tides, which trap them in their homes twice a month.

On January 2, a dike section along the Saigon River in Thu Duc District broke and flooded the houses and apricot gardens of hundreds of families in the area. Local residents said the incident destroyed the gardens and bankrupted many households that had taken out loans to invest in the traditional decorative flower plants for the coming holiday season.

Call to action

The HCMC People’s Committee has instructed city agencies to expedite anti-flood measures before Tet.

All districts, especially riverside areas in Thu Duc and District 12, will have to conduct large-scale inspections of dike systems and enforce weakened sections of the embankments by February 4, according to the committee.

Long from the Flood Prevention PMU said they were preparing to construct dikes along Ben Phu Dinh Street in District 8 and install pumping stations to prevent floods. But he said the project would only begin after Tet.

However, he said a recently-completed project would be able to effectively prevent floods in Binh Tan District’s An Lac Ward and District 6’s Ward 10.

The emergency project had installed one-way valves at 55 sewers and pump stations to prevent tides from overflowing onto the streets.

Long also said several major projects to prevent high-tide floods had been planned, including the construction of a dike system along the Saigon River and along the coastline in Can Gio District. He said another project would also be constructed soon to prevent flooding in districts 1 and 3.

Reported by Mai Vong