MYANMAR DAM BREACH FLOODS 85 VILLAGES

Spillway displaces 63,000 people, submerges a section of major highway

AS many as 85 villages were flooded in Myanmar after a dam failed, unleashing waters that blocked a major highway and forced more than 63,000 people from their homes, a state-run newspaper said yesterday.

The disaster spotlights safety concerns about dams in Southeast Asia after last month’s collapse of a hydroelectric dam in Laos displaced thousands of people and killed at least 27.

Firefighters, troops and officials launched a desperate rescue effort on Wednesday after the spillway of an irrigation dam burst at Swar creek in central Myanmar, sending a torrent of water through villages and the nearby towns of Swar and Yedashe.

By yesterday morning, the water was receding, but two people remained missing and were feared to have been washed away, said Min Thu, deputy administrator of Yedashe.

“People whose villages are on higher ground are preparing to go back to their villages.”

The spillway flooded 85 villages, affecting more than 63,000 people and submerging a section of highway, the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.

Traffic between the cities of Yangon and Mandalay and the capital, Naypyidaw, was disrupted after the flood damaged a bridge on the highway linking the cities.

Work was underway yesterday to repair the dam, where the water level had dropped by several metres, exposing sandy banks.

A priority was to get as much water into the reservoir as possible before the dry season when it would be needed for irrigation, said Kaung Myat Thein, an irrigation official at the Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation Ministry.

He said a probe would determine the cause of the dam breach.

Days before the breach, authorities had given the all-clear to the dam, which can hold 267 million cubic metres of water.