Banqiao Dam

32.982444444444113.62475Koordinaten: 32 ° 58 ' 57 "N, 113 ° 37' 29" O

The Banqiao Dam (Chinese板桥 水库 大坝/板桥 水库 大坝, Pinyin Bǎnqiáo shuǐkù Daba ) and the Shimantan Dam (Chinese石 漫滩 水库 大坝/石 漫滩 水库 大坝, Pinyin Shimantan shuǐkù DABA ) belong to the 62 dams in the administrative territory of the prefecture-level city of Zhumadian in central China 's Henan Province that failed in 1975 during the exceptionally strong typhoon Nina catastrophic. Approximately 26,000 ( according to other sources up to 85,000 ) people were killed by the flood and other 145,000. Due to the subsequent epidemics and famine The cascade rupture of these two dams is considered the most severe dam accident in human history.

History

The Banqiao Dam was built during the Great Leap Forward on the River Ru built in the 1950s ( a tributary of the Huai River ) as part of a project for flood control. He had a capacity of 492 million cubic meters, with a reserve of 375 million m³ in order to avoid flooding. After completion occurred due to design and manufacturing defects in the dam breaks and the water gate on. They were repaired with the help of Soviet engineers and the new design, which was called The iron dam, was considered unbreakable.

Chen Xing was one of China's leading hydrologists and was involved in the design of the dam. He was also a well-known critic of the way the Government to use many dams for a pool. He had suggested twelve sluice gates for the Banqiao Dam, but this was reduced to five sluice gates, and Chen Xing was criticized as being too conservative. Other dams of the project, including the Shimantan Dam, showed a similar reduction of safety features and Chen was excluded from the project. After 1961 there were problems with the water system, he was brought back to help. Chen remained an outspoken critic of the system and was again excluded from the project.

The Banqiao flood

The dam was designed to withstand a flood, " only once in a thousand years " that occurs. In August 1975, there was due to an extraordinary typhoon to a devastating flood. The sluice gates were not able to withstand the excess quantity of water, partly also because Sedimentationsablagerungen. In the early morning of August 8, the smaller Shimantan dam broke upstream. Half an hour later, 1 clock at night, hit the tidal wave on the Banqiao Dam and he also broke. This caused the rupture of a total of 62 dams.

This cascade fraction produced a several -meter-high wave, the downstream poured with almost 50 km / h to the lowlands. Five circles Zhumadians ( Suiping遂平县, Xiping西平县, Runan汝南 县, Pingyu平舆县, Xincai新蔡县), the current municipality Yuanhui源汇区Luohe City漯河 市and the circle Linquan临泉县the city Fuyang in the neighboring province of Anhui have been flooded, as well as thousands of square kilometers of land and countless villages, one of which had no time for evacuation. The Beijing-Guangzhou railway, a main artery was interrupted, just like other important communication lines. Nine days later, over a million people were trapped by water, reach for the disaster relief during epidemics and famine decimated the besieged. Chen Xing was again brought into the project and helped to clean the rivers.

The PRC was trying to suppress information on the disaster. The first (in English) Report on details of the disaster was not published until 1995 by Human Rights Watch.

Many of these dams have been rebuilt, the Banqiao Dam in 1993.

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