Confronted with the imminent landslide risks, the local government has urgently deployed response measures, evacuated citizens from danger zones, and sought long-term solutions to ensure safe settlement and stabilize the people’s lives.

Following the prolonged heavy downpours, guaranteeing safety for residents in high-risk zones has become an urgent demand. In Nậm Cút village, numerous households are gripped with anxiety as massive cracks have emerged across their house foundations and surrounding areas. Through practical reviews, the local government identified five households with 20 individuals residing within the high-risk landslide zone, where structural collapses could happen at any given moment. Consequently, Nậm Nèn commune urgently mobilized forces to evacuate all affected residents and their property from the danger zone.

Currently, the Nậm Cút Kindergarten and Primary School branch serves as temporary shelter for the evacuated households. Although their daily routines are heavily disrupted, the paramount comfort remains that the residents have been moved to a secure location. Essential living conditions are being closely supported by the locality to offer short-term peace of mind while awaiting stability assessments of the affected area. The commune government has also coordinated with relevant units to establish a working delegation to practically inspect and survey the road surface subsidence scenes.

Preliminary evaluation results indicate that the phenomenon was triggered by prolonged heavy rainfall spanning multiple days, combined with construction activities of the Nậm Mức 2 Hydropower plant. The road surface cracks are located approximately 100 to 120 meters away from the construction site within the Nậm Mức riverbed. Presently, two households along National Highway 6 continue to reside within the cracked land zone, posing ongoing safety hazards.

Faced with complex developments, Nậm Nèn commune maintains a round-the-clock guard force at high-risk points, regularly monitoring crack progressions, erecting warning signs, conducting communication to raise disaster prevention awareness, and standing ready to execute further evacuation plans if necessary. The commune has also directed relevant organs and units to work alongside representatives of the hydropower construction unit and the affected households to declare assets, conduct measurements, and count inventory to formulate compensation options for the families.

According to the consensus plan, if the ground reinforcement efforts by Nậm Mức 2 Investment Joint Stock Company guarantee absolute safety, residents will be permitted to return to their former homes. In the event that living conditions cannot be securely guaranteed, the involved units will coordinate financial assistance to help citizens seek appropriate new residential locations.

Landslide risks are not confined to Nậm Cút village alone; they have also emerged in Nậm Nèn 1 village. The family of Lò Văn Thọ discovered numerous cracks on their house foundation and the rear plot of land. These cracks have continued to expand, eating deep into the middle of the foundation, close to the first row of columns of the bedroom block.

Adhering to the “four-in-place” motto, the locality maximized the mobilization of police, military, militia, and grassroots-level security forces, along with cadres, civil servants, and mass organizations, to assist the family in relocating their property and essential daily items to a safe location.

Currently, Thọ’s family is taking temporary shelter at the Nậm Nèn Village Cultural House. Because the locality does not yet possess a resettlement land fund, while the family’s aspiration is to continue living near their old area, the commune is coordinating to find a suitable solution to rebuild their house, while implementing support policies and regimes in accordance with regulations.

Beyond residential clusters, multiple infrastructure works in the commune have also suffered severe impacts. At Km430+950 on National Highway 6, a negative slope landslide and roadbed failure spanning roughly 52 meters materialized. The road surface has developed numerous cracks ranging from 5 to 12 centimeters wide, penetrating into the roadbed from 0.5 to 2.5 meters deep, with a subsidence level between 5 and 8 centimeters. As this is a vital traffic artery, the continuous development of landslide risks could seriously disrupt traffic flow and public daily life.

Đặng Anh Tuấn, Chairman of the Nậm Nèn commune People’s Committee, stated: “For households still located in danger zones, the locality and related units are closely tracking developments day by day to remain proactive with response plans. The supreme objective is to safeguard the lives and properties of the citizens.”

In tandem with assisting the residents, relevant units are urgently deploying infrastructure recovery solutions. Meanwhile, Nậm Mức 2 Investment Joint Stock Company is executing immediate remedial measures, such as backfilling the road surface with crushed stone aggregate, compacting it tightly to block water from seeping into the cracks, and accelerating the construction pace of the riverbed embankment to stabilize the foundation of National Highway 6. The unit maintains regular checks across residential areas facing potential impacts to promptly coordinate handling efforts whenever a new situation arises.

Confronted with increasingly extreme weather anomalies, evacuating citizens from danger zones remains merely a short-term solution. What the people of Nậm Nèn yearn for most is possessing a stable, long-term, and safe residence sheltered from natural disasters. Therefore, the Nậm Nèn Commune People’s Committee requests provincial functional organs to pay attention to inspecting and evaluating the danger levels of landslide areas, while supporting surveys to determine locations and allocate resettlement funding for households currently residing in high-risk zones.

The rainy season is drawing very close with many unpredictable developments, yet there remains absolute confidence that the urgent, drastic involvement of the local government, coupled with the sense of responsibility from relevant units, will help households in landslide-threatened zones soon secure safe housing and stabilize their lives.