Seoul (AFP) – The South Korean partner in a Laos hydropower dam said Wednesday it discovered the upper part of the structure had washed away 24…
Seoul (AFP) – The South Korean partner in a Laos hydropower dam said Wednesday it discovered the upper part of the structure had washed away 24 hours before it collapsed, engulfing villages and leaving hundreds missing.
The wall of water unleashed Monday by the failure of the dam in the country’s southeast surged downstream, sweeping away homes and leaving an unknown number of people feared dead.
SK Engineering & Construction, a South Korean builder that is one of the partners in the project, said it discovered the damage to an auxiliary dam at around 9:00 pm Sunday local time.
“We immediately alerted the authorities and began evacuating (nearby) villagers downstream,” it said in a statement.
Repair work was hampered by heavy rain which had damaged roads, it said, and early on Monday water was discharged from the Xe-Namnoy dam — one of the two main dams in the project — to try to relieve pressure on the auxiliary structure.
The government was warned about further damage to the dam at around noon, prompting an official evacuation order for villagers downstream, and the structure collapsed a few hours later, it said.
