Dams are barriers which obstruct, direct or slow down the flow of water in a river, lake or reservoir. They primarily serve as retaining water, while other structures like floodgates and levees are used to manage or prevent water flow in a specific area or region. Dams generally used to collect water for storage in the drought season or to evenly distribute them to cities and towns. In conjunction they are also help produce electricity by adding hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity.The Banqiao Reservoir Dam is an Arch style dam. Great as Dams sounds when it’s fully functional and when everything is going according to plan, but when things aren’t it could be catastrophic and dangerous if there are locals around the dam.
A Prime example of a dam catastrophic failure causing an estimate of about 171000 people being killed and leaving behind it 11million people losing their homes is the Banqiao Dam. The Banqiao dam or Banqiao reservoir dam is located on the River Ru in Zhumadian Prefecture, Heanan province china.Construction began in April 1951 with the help of the Soviet consultants with a project to control and manage flooding in the area. They also planned to install an electrical power generation to produce electricity for the region.
Construction of the Banqiao was a solution to a severe flooding in the Huai river basin of 1949 and 1950. The completion of the Banqiao reservoir dam was in 1952 due to the absence of hydrology, causing the standards to be lowered. Banqiao dam was designed and build to with stand a once in 1000year flood with 300mm per day.A few years later the volume of the basin increased because the Banqiao reservoir need modifications. The dam was then raised an additional three metres: the dam’s crest was 116. 34m with a wave protection of about 117.
64m, with a total capacity of 492million m3 and with 375million m3 reserved for flood storage. The whole structure of the dam was made of clay. In a few years of the completion of the dam cracks started to appear in the dam itself and sluice gates due to the construction and errors.To fix this problem the engineers reconstructed the old dam to a new designed dam. Chen Xing proposed that 12 sluice gates was to be added to the dam but was scaled back down to five gates, also got criticised as being too conservative. This scaling back on safety feature was also occurring to other dams in the regions like the Shimantan.
In August 1975, once in 2000year flood occurs along with super typhoon Nina and a cold front: resulting in about 189. 5mm of rainfall every hour and 1060mm per day exceeding the annual average by 800mm.This catastrophic event could have been prevented or reduced the after effect by, if the telegram which was sent to the Banqiao dam was received. Allowing the sluice gates to be able to release the water contained initial sooner than possibly the combine rainfall and contain water may have not cause such a massive impact on community and environment around the dam. Another factor is the dam design plan, if the engineers didn’t rush the final design and had more planning then maybe Banqiao dam wouldn’t fail as quick as it did.
