A Dam Failure

This lack of understanding and accountability may prove fatal as China once again embarks on a dam building spree, ignoring 40,000 existing dams at risk of breach. It’s no longer a question of if—it’s a question of when.

It “sounded like the sky was collapsing and the earth was cracking.” Workers looked up in horror to see a wall of water nearly twenty feet high surging towards them at a speed of fifty kilometers per hour. And they had called it “The Iron Dam.” 

The collapse of the Banqiao dam was devastating, not only to the village communities nearby, but also the wildlife nearby. (Wikimedia used with Creative Commons license)

It was August 8, 1975 when the Banqiao Dam (Zhumadian, Henan, China) collapsed. Typhoon Nina had hit three days prior with a downpour so relentless, even birds were pelted to death. The first of the storms dropped 0.448 meters rainfall in a single day—nearly doubling the record. The second and third storms lasted sixteen and thirteen hours respectively. Banqiao Dam was designed to handle a maximum of half a meter over a three day period. Shortly after 1:00 am, the sky cleared and an eerie calm descended. Someone yelled, “The flood is retreating!” Just moments later, the “unbreakable” dam crumbled. 

The equivalent of 280,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water swept through 29 counties and municipalities. Over 85,000 people died that night, but the worst was yet to come. 

Many of those who initially survived the initial devastation met a much slower death. Stranded without food or clean water, people dropped like flies from starvation and disease. Some resorted to eating floating animal carcasses. The final death toll is estimated to be over 220,000—over 11 million people were affected. The Banqiao Dam Collapse was the worst structural failure in history. But why does no one know about it?

It sounded like the sky was collapsing and the earth was cracking.

— Workers near Banqiao Dam

Eric Fish notes in the Economic Observer that the disaster “occurred in an era when the state quickly covered the scale of such catastrophes,” which allowed it to fade from public memory. It was only in 2005 that historical records finally began to open. Yet, the majority of Chinese are still unaware of the Banqiao Dam Collapse and the government’s preceding missteps, such as reducing sluice gates. 

This lack of understanding and accountability may prove fatal as China once again embarks on a dam building spree, ignoring 40,000 existing dams at risk of breach. It’s no longer a question of if—it’s a question of when.