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China Mid‑importance

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Dams Mid‑importance

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Disaster management Low‑importance

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Weather: Floods Mid‑importance

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A fact from Banqiao Dam appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 November 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that in 1975 a freak Typhoon caused the Banqiao Dam in China's Henan Province to fail, killing over 200,000 people?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/November.

Wikipedia

Untitled

I'm a Chinese and this is the first time I know about Banqiao Dam. I can feel the chill down my spine. It's year 2004, and we're still living in 1984.

Article name

Sould this article be renamed to something like Banqiao Dam Disaster? Since the article is more about the disaster than the dam? I didn't think about this when I created the article. Duk 11:01, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I removed the following paragraph

Some people claimed that The Chinese government tried very hard to suppress information of the catastrophe. The first English reporting of details of the disaster, by Human Rights Watch, did not occur until 1995. Information today is more forthcoming [1].

The date of reporting in a foreign language is not an evidence of suppression.A suppression should include native language also. After the flood, a summit of National Flood Prevention and Reservoir Security at Zhengzhou, Henan was reported, held by the Department of Water Conservancy and Electricity, and a nationwide reservoir security examination was performed after this meeting.

This comes from HRW reference which refers to a decade long news blackout. I added it when first writing the article and defer to any Chinese speaking editors who can better investigate. HRW isn't a neutral source. Duk 05:00, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Relocate to Nina

I've started the Typhoon Nina (1975) article. Please relocate some of the information in this article to the Typhoon Nina article. Omni ND 22:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Air strikes

The references to air strikes are jarring and should be explained. What was the purpose of bombing the dams? Tempshill 06:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If only the article had sources, we could answer that question... — jdorje (talk) 08:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably air strikes are used if the sluice gates can't release the water fast enough. By breaching particular dams in sequence other areas may have been saved. Lisiate 23:04, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this article http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/ref/banqiao_dam an almost exact copy of Wikipedia's or vice versa? (arrange) 25 April 2006

see the end of the page.--Skyfiler 22:04, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article lead and River Ru

Both this dam and the River Ru seem most notable for the 1975 collapse, although that's not their only claim to fame by any means. I have created some redirects in the absence of any article on the river as of yet, and added a first paragraph to reflect what most people are likely to be looking for when they come here. Andrewa (talk) 17:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable references

It's been hard to find something reliable on the Web about this, most sites are mirrors of this article or have doubtful provenance. I expect there's a good grey civil engineering journal somewhere that's reviewed the Banqiao disaster in detail, but Google Books isn't giving us a look at it so far. The 18 GW figure seems plucked out of thin air, this dam couldn't have produced more than 400 MW or so based on the flow and head, though I haven't found a reference. Did each of the 62 dams downstream have ca. 300 MW generating capacity? Possible, I suppose, but citation needed. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - I have had a good look but can't find anthing reliable and yes there seems to be a lot of circular referencing,.,.... .......Engineman (talk) 21:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The best I found that is more than likely not a mirror of the article is the product description in this book. The info in the lead also appears to be copied and pasted from there too.--NortyNort (Holla) 02:14, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree -- I checked the math based on the figures for max flow using 1,742 cubic meters/second (from current version of article). The head would need to be many thousands of feet (> 8000 feet) to generate 18 GW. Recommend deleting the capacity until a substantiated number can be found. Ghouse (talk) 17:57, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see that the death count for the dam failure is written in the article as "171,000" when the death toll for the entire typhoon that caused it was around 170,000 (according to Wikipedia's Typhoon Nina article). I have no knowledge on the subject and no sources, so I will not edit anything. However, if someone can find an accurate figure from a reliable source, then please fix the error. The 11 million people figure also seems to encompass more than just the Banqiao Dam, but I may be wrong. --Breakfast221 (talk) 12:21, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1975 Flood

Originally read: "In August 1975, however, a once-in-2000-years flood occurred, and poured more than a year's rainfall in 24 hours (new records were set, at 189.5 mm rainfall per hour and 1060 mm per day, exceeding the average annual precipitation of about 800 mm),[3] which weather forecasts failed to predict,[3] China Central Television reports that the typhoon disappeared from radar [4]. According to Xinhua[5], the forecast was a rainfall of 100 mm by the Beijing-based Central Meteorological Observatory. produced by the collision of Super Typhoon Nina and a cold front."

A couple of lines in this para are odd: The last two lines with "based Central Meteorological Observatory. produced by the collision of Super Typhoon Nina and a cold front." I corrected assuming it referenced the precipitation rate earlier in the para. The sentence "China Central Television reports that the typhoon disappeared from radar" I cannot interpret in a meaningful way. Zedshort (talk) 05:07, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mistake

I think there is a mistake in the text:

On August 8, 0:30, the smaller Shimantan Dam, designed to survive a 1-in-500-year flood, failed to handle more than twice its capacity and broke upstream of Shimantan Dam, 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, water at the Banqiao crested at the 117.94 m level above sea level, or 0.3 meter higher than the wave protection wall on the dam, and it too failed.

Should it not be "On August 8, 0:30, the smaller Shimantan Dam, designed to survive a 1-in-500-year flood, failed to handle more than twice its capacity and broke upstream of Banqiao dam, 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, water at the Banqiao crested at the 117.94 m level above sea level, or 0.3 meter higher than the wave protection wall on the dam, and it too failed.

So that the Shimantan dam broke upstream of the Banqiao Dam,no? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RulerofKnowledge (talk • contribs) 13:44, 2 December 2012 (UTC) I'm pretty sure, looking at Google Earth, that Banquio is not downstream of Shimantan. They are about 30km apart, at about the same elevation,and Shimantan is north of and appears to drain in a northerly direction. Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).Google Earth is my sourceCite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).Bobfinucane (talk) 15:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Connection to the fall of the Gang of Four?

It's widely argued that the Chernobyl disaster was a trigger towards the fall of the USSR. It is possible to speculate that this disaster - or pattern of disasters - by similarly demonstrating the failure of the existing elite's wisdom in this area may have sped up the coup that saw their fall from power a year or so later. I admit it's pure speculation, but one that might be worth consideration. Ender's Shadow Snr (talk) 11:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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killed an estimated 171,000 to 230,000 people

So I was looking up engineering disasters (long story) and I Googled this article: unbelievable-facts.com/2018/04/worst-engineering-disasters.html. I came to Wikipedia to learn more, cause that was kinda huge. However I found discrepancies in the opening paragraph which only stated the low estimate of 171k, which had a larger estimate of 230k in this very Wikipedia article itself, ignored at the opening, at the end under "Legacy": "Unofficial estimates of the number of people killed by the disaster have run as high as 230,000 people.[14]". Someone reverted the "in 1975 caused more casualties than any other dam failure in history at an estimated 171,000 to 230,000 deaths and 11 million displaced." down to a way oversimplified "in 1975 caused 171,000 deaths." This "reverted" more than I added, just "to 230,000" as covered further down. Because it was reverted (or censored?) I was notified and came back to see why as maybe I was wrong. Turns out the link above cited this Wikipedia article as it's information source - so I couldn't cite it. Also, the [14] in the article leads to an old link at the Toronto Sun website - so maybe history didn't happen. While I encourage others to address this as they see fit, I'm not going to investigate further for many reasons, including that I have no dog in this race, nor any expertise, I don't know if this is too "political" or not and I don't want to be banished again, and I would rather do other stuff - and when I am actually on Wikipedia I'd rather improve articles that interest me more. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 00:35, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]