Chinese Earthquake May Have Been Caused by Dam
February 2nd, 2009Via: Telegraph:
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.
Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was “very likely” that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster.
“There have been many cases in which a water reservoir has triggered an earthquake,” said Mr Fan. “This earthquake was very unusual for this area.
There have been no seismic activities greater than a magnitude seven quake along this particular seismic belt before.”
The 7.9 magnitude quake struck last May and left more than five million people homeless. It remains a raw and emotional topic for most Chinese, and the government has been quick to quash any suggestion that Zipingpu may have been responsible for the catastrophe. Researchers have been denied access to seismological and geological data to examine the earthquake further.
Zipingpu is only one of nearly 400 hydroelectric dams in the earthquake zone. Mr Fan said the government had been warned of the danger of building so many large-scale projects in a seismically active area, but that the warnings had gone unheeded.
I hope, for his family’s sake, that Mr. Fan has some life insurance in place.
I don’t think they sell life insurance in China Pookie. You know one life out of how many is hard to put a value on. I guess.
After Katrina, and prior to that the tsunami in Indonesia, I read enough about man made catastrophe’s that I dont’ have it left in me to get “upset” when catastrophe strikes into the lives of those left in the wake of totally, utterly, stupidly, bullshit beyond comprehension deaths caused by MANKIND and their engineering.
Yo, two weeks or so before the tsunami in Indonesia the oil drillers were sounding for oil with explosives ON THE LINE OF TECTONIC PLATES and whales and dolphins were beaching. I for one think that catastrophe was man made. And then Katrina, and the dikes, and the intentional or not flooding of the poorest folks home in New Orleans. That has not yet been healed. Both catastrophes have yet to have their true day of reckoning. May not in my lifetime. Records have a way of being sealed.
At some point in time there will be a reckoning. Unfortunately, like so many whales or dolphins on the beach, the cost in human life due to all of this so called engineering is not a part of the engineering, cost-benefit analyses.
Human life I guess, is at the low end of the totem pole.
@Eileen
I meant that any Chinese finding fault with their government, and stating it in public to reporters, may be pushing up lilies in short order.