Hanoi’s anti-flood leader has claimed that a levee break in the Vietnamese capital that destroyed local crops “took place as planned.”

Do Duc Thinh, head of the agency in charge of anti-flood and dike management in Hanoi, made headlines with the newly coined ‘planned dike break,’ at a meeting with the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control on Friday.

At 6:00 am on Thursday, the Huu Bui levee, running ten kilometers long in Hanoi’s outer district of Chuong My, was failed, allowing hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water to flow through and flood the local residential areas and crops.

Le Trung Ha, chairman of Hoang Van Thu Commune, where the dike is located, told reporters that a 15-meter section of Huu Bui had broken in the incident as the water level crossed the third alarm level.

Fortunately, as the nearest residential area to the levee is one kilometer away, the dike break did not cause any casualties.

Chuong My is located some 26km west of Hanoi.

As many other northern localities, Chuong My suffered destructive flooding that destroyed 92 hectares of rice fields, nearly 850 hectares of crops and 125 hectares of aquatic farms, as well as killing 200 pigs and nearly 10,000 chickens of local farmers.

A flooded house is seen in Chuong My, outside Hanoi.

At Friday’s meeting, Thinh, the Hanoi’s anti-flood official, was questioned whether the dike in Chuong My had broken during the incident.

Thinh said the Huu Bui dike on Bui River will overflow when water level exceeds the 6.5 meter mark, which happened on the morning of October 12, with 9,900 cubic meters of water flowing through the embankment.

Thinh said the water flow did break two concrete pillars measuring some 10 meters in length on the levee, but underlined that “it is not really correct to call it a dike break.”

The official said that the case could be counted as a dike failure if the concrete structure break occurred prior to the water overflow. In reality, “the parts of the dike had given way during the overflow process, so it is not actually right to consider it a break”.

Hanoi anti-flood leader Do Duc Thinh

Thinh added that the overflowing water from Bui River had come to a ‘flood storage area,’ where it was eventually channeled back to the river to ensure safety for the embankment.

As his explanation did not sound convincing, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper asked him to clarify his statement again.

In response, Thinh asserted that “the public may call it a dike break, but we see it as a planned break -- a dike failure in which water came to a flood storage area; nothing was unexpected here.”

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