The Collapse And Concealment of the "Unbreakable" Banqiao Dam

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By the second half of the 20th century, humans were captivated by the idea of taming nature, making their mark on the world with colossal concrete structures. They’d gone absolutely - sorry about this - dam mad.
From democrats to dictators, the latest craze for politicians around the globe was to build dams. And for good reason! Dams are used to produce hydroelectricity, provide irrigation, protect against floods and give more work for more citizens. What could be bad about a dam?
Well, many many things.
Yes, dams are great but they’re also potential weapons of mass destruction - and they’re sitting right above our cities all around the world.
Chairman Mao, the leader of the Chinese Community Party, was one who hopped on the dam bandwagon. He decided to focus his dam efforts on the Huai River, which was particularly subject to flooding, and build the Banqiao Dam. But from word go, there were some problems.
The vice premier at the time said that worrying about flooding was counter-revolutionary and reactionary. Flood protection was for wusses. Instead, they wanted to focus efforts on harnessing the POWER of the water for irrigation and hydroelectricity.
During the construction of the dam, one brave hydrologist named Chen Xing dared to speak up about the fact that the dam didn’t have enough sluice gates installed. Kinda a problem in the event of a flood. But he was labelled a right-wing opportunist and fired. Or sent to a labour camp for reeducation. The waters are murky on that detail.
Around the same time, the Chinese government was also chopping down forests all over the place to make way for steel manufacturing. And as we know, deforestation equals changes in weather patterns and more extreme flooding. Sigh.
But despite the warning signs, the dam was built in the early 1950s. It was declared to be an iron dam that could not be broken. Strong enough to withstand a one in 1000 year flood event (a storm that would unleash about 0.5 meters of rain over 3 days).
And then, in August 1975, along came Typhoon Nina, creating a monstrous weather pattern that dumped three times as much water as that dreaded 1000-year event.
Despite the army’s efforts to control the water (yes, they tried sandbags on top of the dam wall), the dam was soon pulverised by hundreds of billions of litres of water. An inland tsunami 10 metres high and 11 kilometres wide travelled down into the valley at 50 km/h, instantly wiping out several towns in its path and resulting in the death of up to 250,000 people.
But here’s the thing - this all happened during a time when the Communist Party of China had a lot of control over the media. So how long before the world knew the truth about what really happened that day? And surely nobody would deliberately collapse a damn. Would they?
00:00 Impact of dam failures on societies
08:02 The construction and design of the Banqiao Dam
10:40 The typhoon that led to the Banqiao Dam disaster
13:37 The moment the Banqiao Dam collapsed
15:15 The immediate aftermath and the scale of destruction
16:38 The official Chinese government response and secrecy
19:58 Whistleblower Chen Xing helps to rebuild the dam
20:49 Other significant dam collapses worldwide
21:36 The risks associated with ageing dams
22:12 A deliberate dam collapse in China
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"REFERENCES:*
- web.archive.org/web/202003252...
- www.thechemicalengineer.com/f...
- www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/...
- www.popularmechanics.com/scie...
- pubs.geoscienceworld.org/aeg/...
- www.britannica.com/event/Typh...
IMAGE CREDITS:
- Three Gorges Damn Footage, China News Service, CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/... via Wikimedia Commons
- Huai River: MNXANL, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons. Source: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
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