Myanmar dam failure floods 85 villages

Authorities had given an all-clear to the dam despite overspill concerns.

Reuters reports that as many as 85 villages were flooded in Myanmar after a dam failure unleashed waters that blocked a major highway and forced over 63,000 people to evacuate from their homes, a state newspaper said.

A rescue effort was launched after the spillway of an irrigation dam burst at Swar creek in central Myanmar, sending a torrent of water through villages and the nearby towns of Swar and Yedashe. Two people remained missing and were feared to have been washed away, said Min Thu, deputy administrator of Yedashe.

Traffic between Myanmar’s major cities of Yangon and Mandalay and the capital, Naypyitaw, was disrupted after the flooding damaged a bridge on the highway linking the cities.

A priority was to get as much water into the reservoir as possible before the dry season when it is needed for irrigation, said Kaung Myat Thein, an irrigation official at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation. He said a probe would seek the cause of the dam breach.

“The retaining wall of the spillway sank into the foundation about 4-5 feet, causing the flooding, but the main dam is intact,” said the official.

Days before the breach, authorities had given the all-clear to the dam, which can hold 216,350 acre-feet of water, despite residents’ concerns about overspill, state-run media have said. This highlights safety concerns about dams in Southeast Asia after a collapsed hydroelectric dam in Laos displaced thousands and killed at least 27 people.

Read the full report here.