Confusion over number of missing and dead in Laos disaster
PAKSONG DISTRICT, LAOS: About 650 people lived in Bounna Eemchanthavong's remote village in southern Laos before it was devastated by a dam failure, and only 65 of them had been spotted at two shelters for survivors.
But local officials were telling him that only 10 people from the village were officially missing. "I don't know if that number is correct," Mr Eemchanthavong, 61, said. "We're just waiting for more information."
As the search continues by boat and helicopter for survivors and casualties, confusion prevails, with shifting and contradictory official statements.
This is to be expected, said Ian Baird, an expert on Laos at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a risk-averse authoritarian government in a poor country that is not accustomed to responding to disasters of this magnitude.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Cambodia, where the failed dam was causing flooding in northern Stung Treng, the provincial government said 1,289 families had been evacuated.
The dam that was breached amid heavy rain last Monday is one of several in a billion-dollar hydroelectric project.
Behind it is a joint venture of two South Korean companies, one from Thailand, and a state-owned Laotian firm.
Richard Meehan, a former dam builder and adjunct professor at Stanford University's School of Engineering, said it sounded to him like a case of "failure by internal erosion" caused by defects such as inadequate foundation preparation, bad grouting and high-risk design. - THE STRAITS TIMES
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