Scores of mobile phones were found in the lorry belonging to the people who died.
They had used their phones to see in the darkness and to try to message loved ones, in vain, as they slipped away. One of the phones belonged to 26 year old Pham Thi Tra My.
It is over a year since her parents found out about their daughter s death. On the living room wall of their house, in the Can Loc District of Vietnam s central Ha Tinh Province, there is a shrine to Tra My. The flowers on the shelf around her photograph are freshly cut.
Tra My s family
Her other two passions were travel and fashion. On her Facebook page there’s a video of her on a visit to the Bana Hills Golden Bridge in Central Vietnam. She’s videoing herself. The wind is blowing her hair into her face. She swings the camera phone around, over her shoulder you can see a newly married couple having wedding photos taken. Tra My smiles.
According to her father, everything about his daughter was completely authentic. But like many millennials, there was a disconnect between the life she projected online and the one she actually lived. The family is not particularly poor by the standards of their home town, but a couple of years ago they ended up in serious debt.