Zipingpu Dam

The Dam That Shook the Earth

Zipingpu Dam
Zipingpu Dam ChengDu Online, www.cdol.net/BBS Scientists agree that dams can trigger earthquakes. A new research paper presents fresh evidence that the devastating earthquake which killed more than 80,000 people in China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008 was triggered by the Zipingpu Dam. This would be the world’s deadliest dam-induced earthquake ever. Reservoirs can trigger quakes by adding weight to the Earth crust, and by lubricating the fissures of faults. As I reported earlier on this blog, there are more than 70 earthquakes which scientists believe have been induced by dams. In the

Giant Dam May Have Triggered Sichuan Quake

Friday, February 6, 2009
Originally published in The Wall Street Journal BEIJING - Chinese and U.S. scientists are examining the possibility that a giant dam may have triggered the earthquake that killed some 80,000 people when it struck Sichuan province nine months ago, raising questions about ambitious dam-building projects across China's earthquake-prone western regions. Pressure from the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from the town of Dujiangyan in Sichuan, may have helped trigger China's devastating earthquake in May 2008. Scientists are looking into the likelihood that the weight of hundreds of millions of tons of water

Chinese Earthquake May Have Been Man-Made, Say Scientists

Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Originally published in The Telegraph An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre.The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.F

Engineers Face Testing Times as Thousands Flee Dam Threat

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Originally published in The Financial Times The modern world has never faced the threat of dangerous dams onanything like the scale of the crisis now unfolding in Sichuan in theaftermath of the earthquake two weeks ago, engineers say. In addition to about 380 existing man-made dams that were significantlydamaged by the 7.9-magnitude quake, the Chinese authorities are facedwith an estimated 35 new "natural" dams formed when hills and mountainscollapsed into rivers, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The greatest immediate threat comes from the Tangjiashan "quake lake"on the Jianhe R

China Plays Down Dam Failure Concerns

Friday, May 16, 2008
Originally published in the Financial Times Last updated: May 16 2008 17:17If Engineer Yue was worried about lingering just downstream of the dam that has been the focus of fears of catastrophic infrastructure failure caused by China's earthquake, he was certainly not showing it.Despite the large cracks clearly visible on the 156m-tall Zipingpu dam's façade and reports that it might be unsound, Mr Yue said on Friday he was confident it had safely survived the 7.9 magnitude tremor that rocked the area on ­Monday."The managers... are all in their offices," said Mr Yue, pointing at an administr

NYT: Chinese Soldiers Rush to Bolster Weakened Dams

Thursday, May 15, 2008
Originally published in The New York Times CHENGDU, China — China mobilized 30,000 additional soldiers to the earthquake-shattered expanses of the nation’s southwestern regions on Wednesday — not just to help victims, but also to shore up weakened dams and other elements of the infrastructure whose failure could compound the disaster.Experts said that these dams were built around the well-recognized Longmen Shan fault. They warned that such dams might have sustained damage that could cause them to fail even weeks later.Much depends on efforts to reduce the menacing pressure of water behi

International Rivers on NPR "To The Point" about China Quake

Thursday, May 15, 2008
Listen to Aviva Imhof, International Rivers' Campaigns Director, talk to Warren Olney of National Public Radio’s “To The Point” about the fate of the Zipingpu Dam after the massive earthquake in China on May 12, 2008. While Chinese authorities are now saying the dam and its reservoir are safe, Imhof suggests such reassurances may be premature.

China: Troops Rush to Plug Dam Cracks

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Originally published on Yahoo News DUJIANGYAN, China - Hundreds of dams around the epicenter of China's earthquake have been damaged and Chinese troops scrambled Wednesday to plug cracks and open sluices to prevent flooding of already devastated communities.The National Development Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, said the earthquake had damaged 391 dams. It said two of the dams were large ones, 28 were medium-sized and the rest were small ones.The official Xinhua News Agency said 2,000 troops were sent to work on the Zipingpu dam, which lies on about 6 miles up the Min r

Sichuan Earthquake Damages Dams, May Be Dam-Induced

Zipingpu Dam, Sep. 14, 2007
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Zipingpu Dam, Sep. 14, 2007 AP Photo/GeoEye Satellite Image The tragic Sichuan Earthquake of May 12, 2008, which killed an estimated 80,000 civilians, also damaged hundreds of dams in Sichuan Province. Soon after the earthquake struck, the Chinese government reported that at least 391 dams had been damaged in the quake, including major cracks on the largest dam in the area, the Zipingpu Dam. Since then, the Ministry of Water Resources has reported that as many as 2,380 dams were damaged in the earthquake. Scientists in China and the US also fear that the earthquake may have been induced by th

China: Dam Feared Quake-Damaged Safe

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Originally published on CNN.com SICHUAN PROVINCE, China (CNN) -- China's death toll from a massive earthquake soared by thousands Wednesday as troops rushed to plug "severe cracks" in a dam upriver from one of the hardest hit cities. About 2,000 troops were sent to work on a dam near the epicenter of Monday's earthquake, state-run media reported. The Ministry of Water Resources said that an irrigation system and Dujiangyan City -- which has a population of about 630,000 -- "would be swamped," if major problems emerged at the dam, China.org said. The Zi

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