Posted on 02/02/2009 4:35:38 PM PST by PotatoHeadMick
An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre.
The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.
Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.
Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was "very likely" that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Karl Rove again?
Well, if you dam up pu long enough, it may come ziping along at unexpected moments.
“Zipingpu is only one of nearly 400 hydroelectric dams in the earthquake zone. Mr Fan said the government had been warned of the danger of building so many large-scale projects in a seismically active area, but that the warnings had gone unheeded.”
Well, well, well.
That would make it...Zipping pu?
Wow, are there going to be some serious lawsuits.....wait....nevermind.
Chinese “earthquake” tremor matches old Russian underground nuke test seismograph: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1528716/posts?page=105
I’m sure this is front-page news on Google.CN.......wait....nevermind.
Impossible.
Isn’t it?
Population control... Chinese Style!
Not really. A while back on a history channel show about engineering disasters they ran a segment about an earthquake and dam break in California.
Eventually it was determined that water from the lake behind the dam had seeped into a minor fault and the hydrostatic (?) pressure had cause the fault to slip leading to the dam break.
As you know, water is heavy. The canadian sheild is still rebounding from the weight of the last glaciers to cover the region.
Zipingpu dam!!??
I certainly wouldn’t want to be downstream from the zipping poo dam . . . . . . er, Zipingpu.
Zipingpu sounds like rampant diarrhea.
Like, *PING*, dudes.
LOL fast too.
Bush’s fault.
Let’s use some infrastructure money to build a dam at Yellowstone.
Yes and there is an ongoing problem in the east of the Indonesian island of Java where a “mud volcano” has erupted. It started two years ago and hasn’t stopped (Google “Sidoarjo”) and has now covered many square miles and is really devastating the area. There was drilling work going on at the time by an oil company and they have pretty much been universally blamed for the problem, they say however that their work was not the cause as the eruption occurred a little distance away from their borehole and the cause might be related to a nearby earthquake around the same time.
For most people it has been accepted that the drilling was the cause of the eruption and have refused to accept that it could have occurred naturally and that would appear to have been an end to it. However only last week in another spot in Indonesia hundreds of miles away on a separate island another “mud volcano” has erupted, no drilling was going on nearby. Not unnaturally the much maligned drilling company is pointing to that and saying “See?”.
So it’s hard to say definitely whether man made events can cause these tectonic problems.
thanks, bfl
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