
The Legacy of the Banqiao Dam Collapse (2013) - dredmorbius
https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/the-forgotten-legacy-of-the-banqiao-dam-collapse-7821
======
dredmorbius
I'd been unaware of Banqiao until a few years ago. I think I tracked it down
after runing across a curious exclusion or qualification regards deaths per
TWHe generated among technologies in an IPCC energy alternatives reort.

Its scale overwhelms me. And yet the chain of institutional, engineering, and
circumstancial events triggering it offer a huge set of cautionary lessons to
advocates of other options, notably nuclear. I recommend reading the Banqiao
history closely.

Today, and for another 300 years, Fukushima and Chernobyl have effectively no
inhabitants.

Zhumadian city, inundated by the Banqiao disaster, is now home to over 7
million souls.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhumadian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhumadian)

Once dam breaks cease being raging floods, life resumes, for those not fully
extinguished, in a matter of weeks or years. Not centuries.

And the factors in assessing, avoiding, mitigating, alerting, and responding
to risks are all remarkably similar to those of nuclear installations, save
the very long-tail disasters.

The US has seen few major dam failures, though several have ocurred. Johnstown
(1889) saw by far the most deaths, 2,200 (it spurred creation of the Red Cross
and massive reforms to liability law), but see also the St. Francis (431
souls) and Teton (11) failures, and near misses or ongoing risks at Oroville,
Isabella, Glen Canyon, among others.

Elsewhere, there are the cases of Vajont (2000+), Machchu (5500+), and others,
or huge risks, as at Mosul.

Again, the failures largely accrued from institutional hubris, engineering
insufficience, lack of reevant domain knowledge (often deliberate ignorance or
denial, see especially Vajont, also St. Francis), poor overall management,
lack of disaster preparation, drilling, or readiness, limited resurces or
capabilities (especialy in developing countries), communications breakdown
(see Banqiao's comms loss), and inadequate resonse in light of imminent or
present threat.

None of these are domain-specific to hydraulic civil engineering or absent
from nuclear engineering projects.

Many engineering lessons are learnt in blood and lives. Banqiao is a powerful
education.

The Wikipedia article is also excellent:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam)

