Widespread landslides increase
On April 13, in the Dong Hung canal area (Cai Nuoc commune), a section of rural traffic road about 30m long seriously subsided. The entire asphalt road surface was broken, the base subsided from 0.5 to 1.2m deep, forming deep holes and long cracks close to the canal edge.
The landslide situation has not stopped as cracks about 5m long continue to appear in adjacent locations, posing a risk of spreading. Many households living near the area feel insecure, fearing that the land will continue to collapse, affecting houses and property.
The incident caused all vehicles to be unable to travel through the route, disrupting travel and transportation of goods, directly affecting people's lives.
Notably, this road is 4.5m wide, just invested in upgrading and put into use from the end of 2024. The fact that the project was newly put into operation not long ago has experienced serious subsidence, causing public opinion to raise many questions about the quality of construction as well as the ground survey work.
Mr. Tran Vu Binh - Head of the Economic Department of Cai Nuoc commune - said that immediately after the incident occurred, the locality cordoned off the area, installed dangerous warning signs and arranged forces to guide people to move according to alternative routes.
Not only local incidents, the situation of landslides and subsidence in Ca Mau in recent times has become increasingly complicated. According to statistics, in 2025 alone, the whole province recorded 402 landslide points with a total length of about 629km; more than 1,000 houses were affected, many traffic routes were damaged with a length of over 51km, estimated damage of tens of billions of VND.
Ca Mau currently has about 110km of coastline eroded, of which many sections are particularly dangerous. The erosion rate in some coastal areas is from 20 - 80m per year, causing land loss and reduction in protection forest area. In the period 2011-2025, the locality has lost about 6,250ha of land and mangrove forests.
Need 26,800 billion VND to protect land and protect people
Faced with the increasing erosion situation, Ca Mau province has approved a project to prevent and combat riverbank and coastal erosion to 2030, with orientation to 2050 with a total capital demand of more than 26,800 billion VND.
The province prioritizes handling particularly dangerous landslide areas, directly affecting residential areas and essential infrastructure. It is expected that about 301km of dykes and embankments will be invested in construction, including works to protect coastlines, riverbanks and restore coastlines.
The solutions are implemented in the direction of combining hard structures, soft structures and ecological solutions to suit the specific geological and hydrological conditions of the locality.
At the same time, Ca Mau province also promotes non-construction solutions such as propaganda to raise community awareness, strictly control river and coastal construction activities, handle violations that increase the risk of landslides, and at the same time organize drills to improve disaster response capacity.
Over the past time, many embankment projects to prevent landslides, cause siltation, plant and restore protection forests have been implemented along from the East Sea to the West Sea, contributing to gradually controlling the situation, creating coastal protection corridors and new development land funds.
However, in the context of increasingly extreme climate change and limited investment resources, landslide prevention in Ca Mau still faces many challenges.
In the long term, Ca Mau province believes that there needs to be a comprehensive approach, from population planning, mangrove forest protection, resource exploitation control to infrastructure investment adapting to climate change.
