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 staterun newspaper said yesterday. The disaster spotlights safety concerns about dams in South-east Asia after last month's collapse of a hydroelectric dam in neighbouring Laos that 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. Work was under way 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 is needed for irrigation, said Mr Kaung Myat Thein, an irrigation official at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation. He said a probe would seek the cause of the dam breach.

Posted by

Straits Times