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About 6,600 people are fighting for their lives in the province of Antapue, south of the state of Laos, in Southeast Asia, since the collapse on Monday evening, A dike from the Xepian-Xe Nam Noy Dam. By Tuesday afternoon, about five billion cubic meters of water had sunk and flooded the area around Sanamxai near the border with Cambodia and Thailand. There have been dozens of deaths, hundreds of others are missing in the brown waters of clay.
Video footage of the area shows villagers sitting for hours on the wavy roofs of their huts. Almost all houses seem to be under water until at the bottom of the roofs. At the dam of the "Saddle Dam D" side dam, 8 meters long and 770 meters long and 16 meters high, the marigot also continued to flow unhindered on Tuesday afternoon
. "Heavy rain has caused a lot of water to flow into the lake," said Ratchaburi Holding, a Thai construction company. They sent emergency teams to Laos to stop the water and help the residents.
Possible construction defects
The population has been suffering for years because of the dam. "They are running out of food, water and farmland, residents say they are suffering from a constant famine," the International Rivers Environmental Group criticized in a letter to Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Power Company. builder of the dam, in 2013. "The soil of the land to which they were moved is not suitable even for growing vegetables." At the reservoir is expected to start in 2019, a 410 megawatt power plant with energy production. About ten percent of the electricity is destined for Laos. The rest will be supported by the EGAT electricity supplier. "Bangkok Lights," a phrase in the capital of the Southeast Asian kingdom, "would come out without electricity from Laos".
Some major shopping centers consume as much electricity each day as the small provinces of the country. The rupture of the dam in Laos has nightmares that have plagued critics for years. Communist Party-led Laos has been using the hydropower of the many tributaries of the Mekong for years. In the capital Vientiane, rulers dream of making the small country on the borders of China, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia the "battery of Southeast Asia". By 2017, the country already had 46 hydroelectric power plants and another 54 were under construction. Electricity currently accounts for about 30% of all exports and environmental groups have repeatedly stressed the dangers of the rapid expansion of dams. Now Dam Dam Sanamxai seems to confirm. The construction company concerned may be responsible for unexpected heavy rain. It is likely, however, that even structural flaws contributed to the disaster.
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