230,000 Died in a Dam Collapse That China Kept Secret for Years

MSN ^ | February 17, 2019 | Justin Higginbottom

[EveningStar]

... According to an account of the Banqiao Dam by a Chinese journalist writing under the pseudonym Yi Si, on Aug. 8, as workers stared curiously at the retreating water level of the reservoir, a voice in the dark called out: “The River Dragon has come!” And suddenly the dam ruptured, unleashing 600 billion liters of water and destroying an entire village. By Aug. 17, reports Si, 1.1 million people remained trapped by flooding with 50 to 60 percent of food air-dropped into the area floating in the murky waters. It would take weeks for the waters to drain, revealing bloated corpses dotting the landscape in the late summer sun.

The government kept news of the disaster from being broadcast nationally, and there hadn’t been any international observers present. But when China’s Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power released a study in July 1989, it reported that the dam breach caused more than 85,000 people to die instantly. Two years earlier, “On Macro-Decision Making in the Three Gorges Project,” a study conducted by eight Chinese water science experts who probably had access to censored government reports, estimated the number of total dead — from flooding and the resulting epidemics and famine — at 230,000...

[Does so]

I see what you did there! ;)

[SunkenCiv]

;^)