‘I had no time ... I just held my kids and ran’
Laos villagers recall moment floods arrived after dam collapse
SANAMXAY, Laos — The floodwater struck his village as 35-year-old Chanxay Phaivongthe was about to go to sleep.
“I had no time to pick anything up and I just held my kids and ran,” Chanxay said in Sanamxay District Middle School, which is now a makeshift shelter for victims after a dam collapse in Laos last week triggered flash flooding.
On Sunday, nine people were confirmed dead while 122 are still missing.
The under-construction Saddle Dam D of the Xe PianXe Nam Noy hydropower project, which consists of two main dams and five saddle dams, burst on Monday night, unleashing about 5 billion cubic meters of water from the mountain to the villages of Sanamxay district down the Xe Pian River.
Six villages were entirely submerged in the muddy flood. Woods from destroyed houses floated on the water, Chanxay said, who said he and his family managed to climb on to the rooftop of a house.
“It was a mess. People just grabbed anything they could. Some houses were totally submerged and some were even flooded away,” he said.
Chanxay and his four family members found a small boat but it had been overturned by the force of the water, so they had to stay on a nearby tree.
“I shouted and burst into tears. The next morning, authorities in their boats came to rescue us,” Chanxay said, adding they had been stranded for seven to eight hours.
He said he was lucky that everyone in his family survived, and they got clothes and food in the makeshift shelter.
“My house is gone, and also crops and motorcycle. My only property left is my underpants,” Chanxay said.
Phetsamai Phuangmala, a 43-year-old from Thahin Village, one of the most severely damaged in the disaster, also lost everything.
“My house is gone and my buffaloes are dead. It is great that everyone in my family survived but I lost my property,” Phetsamai said, though she still has a piece of paddy field in Donbok village, now also as a temporary shelter for displaced villagers as it lies on a relatively high land.
Temporary shelters
Khamlieng Outhakaisone, deputy director general of the General Staff Department of the Lao People’s Army and commander of the rescue operation, told a news conference on Saturday night that Donbok sheltered almost 1,100 affected people from other locations.
As the flood subsided on Saturday, some villagers returned to check the condition of their homes, if they were still there.
A villager from Kokkong, a village not far from the administrative center of Sanamxay district, said: “Everything was washed away but I got these,” he said, showing trousers and a pair of slippers, all very muddy.
He and his friend also took some food to his friend’s dog, which he said had been stranded there for a few days.
After collecting their remaining property, they went back to the shelter, along with the dog.
As of late Saturday, the total number of villagers living in shelters had reached 7,324, with 3,721 living in three shelters in Sanamxay district and 1,407 in shelters set up in Pathoumphone district and Paksong district of Champasak province. Around 600 people were sheltered in Tammayoth village, 1,086 in Donbok and 500 in Pindong village, according to Khamlieng.