The
Banqiao Reservoir Dam and
Shimantan Reservoir Dam are among 62
damA dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions...
s in
ZhumadianZhumadian is a prefecture-level city in southern Henan province, People's Republic of China. It borders Xinyang to the south, Nanyang to the west, Pingdingshan to the northwest, Luohe to the north, Zhoukou to the northeast, and the province of Anhui to the east.-Administrative divisions:The...
Prefecture of
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
's Henan Province that failed catastrophically or were intentionally destroyed in 1975 during
Typhoon NinaSuper Typhoon Nina was a short-lived but intense 1975 super typhoon that caused major damage and deaths in China, mainly from the collapse of the Banqiao Dam. Over 100,000 people died because of the resulting floods, making it one of the deadliest tropical cyclones recorded in history...
.
History
The Banqiao dam was built in the early 1950s on the Ru River as part of a project to control
floodA flood is an overflow or accumulation of an expanse of water that submerges land. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide....
ing and generate electricity and as a response to severe flooding in the
Huai RiverThe Huai River is a major river in China. The Huai River is located about mid-way between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, the two largest rivers in China, and like them runs from west to east...
Basin in 1949 and 1950
http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/aug1975.htm. The dam was 118 meters high (387 ft) and had a storage capacity of 492 million m³ (398,000 acre feet), with 375 million m³ (304,000 acre feet) reserved for
floodA flood is an overflow or accumulation of an expanse of water that submerges land. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide....
storage. Cracks in the
damA dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions...
and
sluice gatesA sluice is a water channel that is controlled at its head by a gate . For example, a millrace is a sluice that channels water toward a water mill...
appeared after completion due to construction and engineering errors. They were repaired with advice from Soviet engineers and the new design, dubbed
the iron dam, was considered unbreakable.
Chen XingChen Xing was one of China's foremost hydrologists and was involved in the design of the Banqiao Dam. He was also a vocal critic of the government dam building policy, which involved many dams in the basin. He had recommended 12 sluice gates for the Banqiao Dam, but this was scaled back to 5 and...
was one of China's foremost hydrologists and was involved in the design of the dam. He was also a vocal critic of the government dam building policy, which involved many dams in the basin. He had recommended 12 sluice gates for the Banqiao Dam, but this was scaled back to 5 and Chen Xing was criticized as being too conservative. Other dams in the project, including the Shimantan Dam, had similar reduction of safety features and Chen was removed from the project. In 1961, after problems with the water system surfaced, he was brought back to help. Chen continued to be an outspoken critic of the system and was again removed from the project.
1975 Flood
The Dam was designed to survive a 1-in-1,000-year flood ( of rainfall per day). In August of 1975, however, a 1-in-2,000 year flood occurred, and poured more than a year's rainfall in 24 hours (new records were set, at rainfall per hour and per day, exceeding the average annual precipitation of about ),,which weather forecasts failed to predict, produced by the collision of
Super Typhoon NinaSuper Typhoon Nina was a short-lived but intense 1975 super typhoon that caused major damage and deaths in China, mainly from the collapse of the Banqiao Dam. Over 100,000 people died because of the resulting floods, making it one of the deadliest tropical cyclones recorded in history...
and a
cold frontA cold front is defined as the leading edge of a cooler and drier mass of air, replacing a warmer mass of air.-Development of cold front:...
. Communication to the dam was largely lost due to the collapse of buildings under heavy rain and wire failures. On August 6, a request to open the dam was rejected, because of the existing flood in downstream areas. On August 7, however, the request was accepted, but the telegrams failed to reach the dam.
http://www.cctv.cn/program/jzql/topic/history/C15481/20060330/100946.shtml
The sluice gates were not able to handle the overflow of water, partially due to
sedimentationSedimentation is the tendency for particles in suspension or molecules in solution to settle out of the fluid in which they are entrained, and come to rest against a wall...
blockage. On August 7 at 7:30 p.m., the
People's Liberation ArmyThe People's Liberation Army is the unified military organization of all land, sea, and air forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLA was established on 1 August 1927—celebrated annually as "PLA Day"—as the military arm of the Communist Party of China...
Unit 34450, which was deployed on the Banqiao Dam, sent the first dam failure warning via telegraph. On August 8, 12:30 a.m., the smaller Shimantan Dam, which was designed to survive a 1-in-500-year flood, failed to handle more than twice its capacity and broke upstream, only 10 minutes after Unit 34450 sent a request that would open the Banqiao Dam by air strike. A half hour later, at 1:00 a.m., water crested at the Banqiao Dam and it too failed. This precipitated the failure of 62 dams in total. The runoff of Banqiao Dam was per second in vs. per second out, and 701 million tons of water was released in 6 hours, while 1,670 million tons of water was released in 5.5 hours at upriver Shimantan Dam, and 15.738 billion tons of water was released in total.
The resulting flood waters caused a large wave, which was wide, high in
SuipingSuiping County is a county of Henan, China. It is under the administration of Zhumadian city....
(遂平), to rush downwards into the plains below at nearly , almost wiped out an area long, wide, and created temporary lakes as large as . Seven county seats, namely Suiping,
XipingXiping County is a county of Henan, China. It is under the administration of Zhumadian city....
(西平), Ru'nan (汝南),
PingyuPingyu County is a county of Henan, China. It is under the administration of Zhumadian city....
(平舆),
XincaiXincai County is a county of Henan, China. It is under the administration of Zhumadian city.-Administrative divisions:The county of Xincai administers 9 towns and 13 villages.*Gulu Town *Tangcun Town...
(新蔡), Luohe (漯河),
LinquanLinquan County is a county of Anhui Province, China. It is under the administration of Fuyang city....
(临泉), were inundated, as were thousands of square kilometers of countryside and countless communities. Evacuation orders had not been fully delivered because of weather conditions and poor communications. Telegraphs failed, signal flares fired by Unit 34450 were misunderstood, telephones were rare, and some messengers were caught by the flood. While only 827 out of 6,000 people died in the evacuated community of Shahedian just below Banqiao Dam, half of a total of 36,000 people died in the unevacuated Wencheng commune of Suipin County next to Shahedian, and the Daowencheng Commune was wiped from the map, killing all 9,600 citizens. Although a large number of people were reported lost at first, many of them returned home later. Tens of thousands of them were carried by the water to downriver provinces and many others fled from their homes. It has been reported that around 90,000 - 230,000 people were killed as a result of the dam breaking.
To protect other dams from failure, several flood diversion areas were evacuated and inundated, and several dams deliberately destroyed by air strikes to release water in desired directions. The Nihewa and Laowangpo flood diversion areas downstream of the dams soon ran out of their capacity and gave up part of their storage on August 8, forcing more flood diversion area to begin to evacuate. The dikes on the Quan River collapsed in the evening of August 9, and the entire Linquan county in
Fuyang, AnhuiFuyang is a prefecture-level city in northwestern Anhui province, People's Republic of China. It borders Bozhou to the northeast, Huainan to the southeast, Lu'an to the south, and the province of Henan on all other sides.-Administration:...
was inundated. As the Boshan Dam, with a capacity of , crested, and the water released from the failures of Banqiao and Shimantan was rushing downstream, air strikes were made against several other dams to protect the Suya Lake dam, which was already holding 1.2 billion m³ of water
http://www.cctv.cn/program/jzql/topic/history/C15481/20060330/101011.shtml. Suya Lake only won a temporary reprieve, and both it and Boshan became targets as well. Finally, the Bantai Dam, which was holding 5.7 billion m³ of water, was bombed.
http://www.cctv.cn/program/jzql/topic/history/C15481/20060330/101061.shtml
The
Jingguang RailwayJingguang railway is a major artery railway in the China connecting Beijing West railway station in Beijing to Guangzhou railway station in Guangzhou, Guangdong....
, a major artery from
BeijingBeijing is a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China...
to
GuangzhouGuangzhou , in English formerly known as Canton and also known as Kwangchow, is a sub-provincial city and the capital of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the People's Republic of China.It is a port on the Pearl River,...
, was cut off for 18 days, as were other crucial communications lines. Although 42,618
People's Liberation ArmyThe People's Liberation Army is the unified military organization of all land, sea, and air forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLA was established on 1 August 1927—celebrated annually as "PLA Day"—as the military arm of the Communist Party of China...
troops were deployed for disaster relief, all communication to and from the cities was cut off. Nine days later there were still over a million people trapped by the waters, relying on
airdropAn airdrop is a type of airlift, developed during World War II to resupply otherwise inaccessible troops, who themselves may have been airborne forces. In some cases, it is used to refer to the airborne assault itself. Early airdrops were conducted by pushing small crates with parachutes out of the...
s of food and unreachable to disaster relief. Epidemics and famine devastated the trapped survivors. The damage of the
ZhumadianZhumadian is a prefecture-level city in southern Henan province, People's Republic of China. It borders Xinyang to the south, Nanyang to the west, Pingdingshan to the northwest, Luohe to the north, Zhoukou to the northeast, and the province of Anhui to the east.-Administrative divisions:The...
area was estimated 3.5 billion
RenminbiThe renminbi is the currency of the People's Republic of China , whose principal unit is the yuan , subdivided into 10 jiao , each of 10 fen . The renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of the PRC. The ISO 4217 abbreviation is CNY, although it is also commonly...
yuan
http://www.cctv.cn/program/jzql/topic/history/C15481/20060330/101102.shtml. The Zhumadian government appealed to the whole nation for help, and received more than 300 millions
RenminbiThe renminbi is the currency of the People's Republic of China , whose principal unit is the yuan , subdivided into 10 jiao , each of 10 fen . The renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of the PRC. The ISO 4217 abbreviation is CNY, although it is also commonly...
in donations.
After the flood, a summit of National Flood Prevention and Reservoir Security at Zhengzhou, Henan was held by the Department of Water Conservancy and Electricity, and a nationwide reservoir security examination was performed after this meeting. Chen Xing was again brought back to the project and aided in clearing the river channels.
Casualties
According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, in the province, approximately 26,000 people died from
floodA flood is an overflow or accumulation of an expanse of water that submerges land. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide....
ing and another 145,000 died during subsequent epidemics and
famineA famine is a widespread scarcity of food that may apply to any faunal species, which phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality...
. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were affected.
The death toll of this disaster was declassified in 2005.
Legacy
Many of the dams have been rebuilt, including Banqiao in 1993 and Shimantan in 1996. In 2005, Typhoon Haitang approached China with a path similar to
Typhoon NinaSuper Typhoon Nina was a short-lived but intense 1975 super typhoon that caused major damage and deaths in China, mainly from the collapse of the Banqiao Dam. Over 100,000 people died because of the resulting floods, making it one of the deadliest tropical cyclones recorded in history...
, dropped heavy rains in the Zhumadian area but did minimal damage to the area.
A
documentary filmDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
about the 1975 flood was broadcast by
CCTV-1CCTV-1 is the primary channel of the Chinese television network, CCTV in the People's Republic of China. It has a mixture of all kinds of TV programs, and is available to both cable and terrestrial television viewers.- Generic schedule :...
between April 4, 2006 and April 7, 2006.
See also
- Huai River
The Huai River is a major river in China. The Huai River is located about mid-way between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, the two largest rivers in China, and like them runs from west to east...
(to which the Ru River is tributary)
- Natural disasters in China
China is one of the countries most affected by natural disasters. It had 6 of the world's top 10 deadliest natural disasters; the top 3 occurred in China: the 1931 China floods, death toll 2 million to 4 million, the 1887 Yellow River flood, death toll 0.9 million to 2 million, and the 1556...
External links