At 1.00am on Monday, serious inundation occurred inside a tunnel at the intersection of the Dien Bien Phu and Nguyen Tri Phuong streets in Da Nang after torrential rain had poured down to the city for nearly an hour.

The inside of Dien Bien Phu-Nguyen Tri Phuong tunnel being inundated with rainwater

Some sections inside the tunnel were submerged in rainwater of over 0.5m.

The venue was not completely drained until dawn, and this caused the engines of many vehicles passing through the tunnel to fail.

According to Mr Luong Thach Vy, the Head of the Management Board of the Da Nang Priority Infrastructure Investment Projects, an automatic anti-flood pump system was installed inside the tunnel on 24 April, and in the evening of 29 April, its operation temporarily halted for repair and maintenance work. 

Soon after the unexpected inundation, the pump operators turned on the device to manage to effectively clear a large amount of rainwater off the tunnel.

Tomorrow, 3 May, the anti-flood pump system will officially put into operation in a bid to radically resolve recent partial flooding inside the tunnel, and ensure that such a matter might not happen again.

It was reported that, since its official operation in November 2017, the downtown tunnel experienced inundation for 3 occasions.