Investigation launched into Da Lat’s deadly landside

Police have probed into the case to see if there have been “violations in construction causing serious consequences,” they announced on Sunday.

On June 29, a 50-meter-long section of an embankment on an alley of Hoang Hoa Tham Street collapsed. The embankment belonged to the construction site of a retaining wall.

As a result, soil and rocks fell on top of a tent underneath where two construction workers, a married couple, were sleeping inside, and damaged several houses in the area.

The couple were later found dead, while five other people of one family were left with injuries after being rescued from the rubble.

The incident area spans 2,100 sq.m and is owned by four families, and the investor of the construction project is building a retaining wall, a structure found in places where extra support is needed to prevent the soil from moving downhill with erosion.

The Department of Construction in Lam Dong Province said last Friday that the amount of soil used for building the retaining wall “was too large and lost the bearing capacity under the impacts of heavy rains lasting for several days in a row.”

The project’s investor was licensed by the city to build the embankment that stretches 381 m long and 13.4 m high. It was finished a year ago.

Related to the case, Lam Dong Province People’s Committee last week suspended Nguyen Duong Trung Huu, the head of Da Lat’s urban management department.