BIGGEST DAM

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE WERE TO

Failure of the dam would create an unimaginable catastrophe in China, the most populous country in the world. Reason: An enormous flood wave would sweep away everything in its path, threatening the 400 million inhabitants of the Yangtze River Basin. No alarm could save the villages immediately below the dam or the city of Yichang, a metropolis of more than 4 million people just 35 miles away. This summer China saw its worst flooding in 70 years, and there have been warnings of the disaster that would result if the dam were to fail. The Chinese government defended the dam’s integrity and called the reports “rumors hyped by some Western media.”

CAN A DAM CAUSE AN EARTHQUAKE?

Summer 1993: To facilitate building the Three Gorges Dam, China begins work to reroute the Yangtze River through a new channel. Enormous blocks of concrete are installed to divert the river from its natural course. The 370-mile-long reservoir will flood more than 240 square miles of land, drowning more than 1,000 towns and villages and displacing an estimated 1.3 million people. The huge lake will also cover hundreds of architectural and cultural sites.the 26,000 workers involved in the immense project first remove 135 million cubic yards of stone and earth before constructing the huge dam from 11 million tons of cement, 1.9 million tons of steel, and 1.6 million tons of wooden timbers. More than 100 workers will lose their lives over the course of the project.

The dam is designed to hold back an unprecedented quantity of water. But the structure is the largest of its kind ever built, so who knows whether the dam’s design will actually be able to fulfill its unparalleled mission and withstand the great forces that theory estimates it will face. Will the chosen material be strong enough? Structural engineers have done their utmost to assess the ramifications of the strain