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In China severe floods, mud, hail, raise concerns about the Three Gorges Dam

 Something to watch

Spare a thought for people living in China. There have been 31 days of rain, leading to mass flooding, mudslides, a few minor earthquakes, and some ominous warnings like in #Chongqing city, where people have been told they need to be “above the third floor” and to prepare for floods that might reach 193m (presumably “elevation” not depth of water). There is chatter on social media ( and a few news outlets) wondering if the ThreeGorgesDam is about to break.  The chatter has been building for a week and it’s so serious that Chinese government have officially said it’s nonsense. Despite the awesome potential of a failure (or even a serious flood) there is surprisingly small discussion in the media or even on Twitter. Almost like the CCP doesn’t want it discussed?

In the last hours the normal inflow data for the dam has stopped being publicly updated. “Just a glitch”.

As Kate says at SmallDeadAnimals. It’s probably nothing.

The Epoch Times: Floods in China reach biblical proportions

Rains have lasted over 30 days and are continuing. And many other disasters are hitting at once including tornadoes, hailstorms, torrents, mudslides, and earthquakes — in addition to a possible new virus outbreak from the swine flu, and also expected locusts.

The Epoch Times is outspokenly anti-communist, connected with the Falun Gong and is banned inside China.

 The Crossroads Youtube channel belongs to The Epoch Times.

The Taiwan News is running with it:

Earthquake sparks fears of landslides above Three Gorges Dam

Chinese seismologist predicts earthquake above Three Gorges Dam, warns of ‘catastrophe’

#ThreeGorgesDam

Photo China, three gorges dam flood. 2020

Flooding in China (video below)

That is a lot of water.

Photo China, three gorges dam flood. 2020

Flooding in China  (video below)

Check out the twitter feed at  #ThreeGorgesDam 

There some astonishing footage.

Watch those videos at this link if you can‘t see them here  (I don’t think they work on firefox).

  …

Obviously we hope the communist engineering works out ok and remember that things on Twitter are unverified, and could be a photo of a different flood.

 

UPDATE: Best short summary  of  dubious building standards and risk, from KHL comment #12

A Chinese hydrologist who helped do the feasibility study on 3 Gorges has several issues with the dam and its possibility of collapse. The left bank was examined by wester experts who said the dam wasn’t up to standards. Not enough rebar, substandard concrete. It’s important to realized that this dan was designed in the 1980s and built from 1992 to 2009, a time when Chinas technical prowess was not yet developed. The containment reservoir isn’t large enough. Initially they claimed the dam was built for a 10000 year flood, then a 1000 year flood, then a 100 and finally said that the dam couldn’t be relied upon to control flooding. In addition, the spillways are improperly designed to that when they’re open they cause flooding down river at least 5 times faster than before there was a dam. In addition, the dam had never run all the turbine at once probably because of the fear of massive flooding down river. Yesterday was the first time they all ran at once. Also yesterday there was a 4.5 earthquake near the dam, which raised the risk of landslides. And we’ve still got another month of this to go.

The concrete is shifting accord to Weinlow because the large concrete blocks are not anchored to the bedrock. Shortly after the dam was opened in 2009 cracks started forming in the concrete. A concrete expert was brought in and said they were minor superficial cracks.

Many YouTube videos have been pulled down, when their Chinese masters snap their fingers, American social media and mainstream media jump to their feet. Ask why the issue of the 3 Gorges structural integrity is not being addressed by any western media. If this dam collapses it will be the single greatest disaster in recorded history. There are 66 nuclear powers down stream from the dam and there 400-600 million people there as well as a number of major cities. Think about that.

UPDATE: The shape of the dam is alleged by some to show wobbles and movements we don’t expect in concrete walls . CCP says the wall has only moved a few mm and it’s normal. Current Google Earth Satelite image does not show the warping. Fake photo?

There are strangely few tweets about this topic, given the potential gravity of it. A few forex traders and others are talking of ways to benefit. The odd video is leaking out of China. How strong is the censorship?

 

In China, the rainfall in metres,
Not the usual centimetres,
Could force debris and mud,
In a Biblical flood,
Through dams in billions of litres.

–Ruairi

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