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Photo taken from a video of ABC Laos showing an aerial view of the floods caused by the collapse of a dam in Attapeu province on July 24, 2018 in southeastern Laos / ABC LAOS / AFP
Rescuers were looking for hundreds of missing people in Laos after the collapse of a hydroelectric dam on Wednesday, but only seventeen bodies have been recovered and relief operations promise to be difficult in this isolated area.
"There are seventeen bodies recovered so far, but we can not yet estimate the number of missing," Chana Miencharoen told AFP. Thai consul in Laos present on the spot, adding that floods have flooded several villages.
The authorities of Laos, a very closed communist state, where sources of information are scarce, have at this stage provided no official record of the scale of the disaster. The official Laotian agency reported on Tuesday "several deaths and hundreds of missing", as well as 6,600 people homeless.
Following torential rain, "the upper part of the dam" was taken Sunday to 21 hours (1400 GMT), nearly 24 hours before the collapse of the structure, said the Korean company SK Engineering and Construction, which is involved in the project.
Sunday night, "we immediately alerted Authorities and started evacuating the villagers "who were closest, added the Korean company.
Laos: collapse of a dam / AFP
The rupture dam has released 500 million tonnes of water, according to data from another dam operator, Korea Western Power, flooding seven villages.
Workers were dispatched to the site, but attempts to repair were ent ravaged by heavy rains.
On Friday, "eleven centimeters of subsidence was detected in the center of the dam", which is located in the remote province of Attapeu, in the south of the country, near the Cambodian and Vietnamese borders , said Korea Western Power.
– "Inadequate warning systems" –
This disaster "reveals the inadequacy of warning systems" and "raises important questions about the safety of dams in Laos, including their relevance to weather conditions ", in this country struck every year by monsoon rains, said Maureen Harris, specialist of Laotian dams for the NGO International Rivers.
Aerial images posted by the local chain ABC Laos show a totally flooded area that covers homes and jungle over a large area
Photo taken from a video of ABC Laos showing an aerial view of the floods caused by the collapse of a dam in Attapeu province, 24 July 2018 in southeastern Laos / ABC LAOS / AFP
Families, muddy water up to knees, evacuate the place with the few objects they were able to save, according to images broadcast by local media, all controlled by the state. Other residents are waiting for help on the roof of their house, near a partially submerged Buddhist temple.
The disaster area is surrounded by dense forest, complicating operations.
The structure that is collapsed, "Saddle Dam D", is part of a network of several dams. The $ 1-billion hydroelectric power project involves Laotian, Thai and South Korean companies, a joint venture of Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Power Company's (PNPC).
The Dam had to start supplying electricity in 2019, of which 90% was to be exported to neighboring Thailand, the rest to be distributed on the local network.
Enclosed in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula, Laos, a small rural and mountainous, aims to become "the battery of Southeast Asia."
According to the website of the NGO International Hydropower Association (IHA), more than 50 hydropower projects are under development in the country, at the the environmental organizations that highlight their impact on the Mekong, its flora and fauna, the rural populations, often displaced, and the local economies that depend on them.
The country exports the majority of this energy. especially in China, Vietnam or Thailand, eager for energy.
The collapse of dams or dikes, similar to that which has just occurred in Laos, are relatively frequent in Asia and have affected the powerful neighbor In August 1998, hundreds of people, including 150 soldiers, died in the Chinese province of Hubei after more than 700 meters of a dike was collapsed near the Yangtze River. [19659004] More than 20,000 people were killed in the country in August 1975 after the failure of dams blocking the Banqiao and Shimantan reservoirs in central China's Henan province, a disaster that was only revealed 24 years later
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