10. This Dam Disaster Capped Off Another Bad Idea
The Banqiao Dam was one of 62 dams that collapsed because of Typhoon Nina. When it gave way, it released almost 16 billion cubic meters of water. They produced a wave 6.2 miles wide and 10 to 23 feet high, that rushed downstream at 31 miles an hour. It left a swath of devastation 9.3-miles-wide and 34-miles-long. The Banqiao Disaster was history’s worst structural failure. It unleashed the third deadliest flood ever, devastated 30 cities and counties, inundated 3 million acres, and destroyed almost 7 million houses. Over 10 million people were impacted, and the death toll might have been as high as 230,000.
The disaster occurred at the tail end of Mao’s regime and his Cultural Revolution – another bad idea that produced years of turmoil because Mao wanted to retain power by getting rival communist factions to fight each other, and leave him as arbitrator. The Chinese authorities did their best to hide the extent of the catastrophe. Solid information – or as solid as governmental information ever gets in China – did not emerge until the 1990s. The extent of the disaster finally came to light when a former Minister of Water Resources wrote a preface for a book, in which details were revealed for the first time.
