Vietnam landslides after extreme rainfall: slope stability lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on Geoengineer.org – News
30 Second Briefing
Prolonged storms in Vietnam have triggered one of the most severe sequences of rainfall-induced hazards in decades, with extensive flooding and more than a dozen landslides reported across Lam Dong province and neighbouring highland areas. Intense, long-duration rainfall on steep, highly weathered slopes has caused rapid slope failures, debris flows and road embankment collapses, cutting key mountain highways and isolating several rural communities. Geotechnical teams now face urgent stabilisation of saturated cut slopes, clearance of landslide debris from narrow carriageways, and reassessment of drainage and slope design criteria for future extreme events.
Technical Brief
- Failures involved shallow translational slides in colluvium and deeper rotational slips in highly weathered basalt.
- Several debris flows mobilised channelised material, indicating progressive entrainment from saturated gullies and side slopes.
- Road cut failures commonly initiated at over-steepened faces with minimal benching and inadequate surface drainage interception.
- Geotechnical investigation is focusing on back-analysis of slip surfaces, residual shear strength of saprolite and piezometric response.
- Emergency monitoring relies on visual patrols, temporary inclinometers at critical cuts and manual rainfall thresholds for road closures.
- Short-term remediation includes rapid debris clearance, temporary shotcrete, toe berms and upslope diversion drains to reduce infiltration.
Our Take
Lam Dong sits in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, where steep terrain, lateritic soils and rapid urban expansion make rainfall-triggered slope failures a recurrent design issue for roads, hydropower and mining-related infrastructure, so operators will likely face tighter geotechnical and drainage requirements after this event.
Within our 11 Hazards stories, Vietnam appears less frequently than countries such as India or Brazil, suggesting that this cluster of failures may prompt closer regional scrutiny of hillside development controls and early‑warning systems in the Central Highlands.
For projects tagged under Safety and Failure in our database, post‑event investigations often lead to mandatory upgrades in slope monitoring and debris‑flow management; Lam Dong authorities and project owners can expect similar pressure to adopt higher design return periods for extreme rainfall in this region.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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