Laos dam collapse: survivors tell devastating tales as blame shifts to government’s aggressive growth model
On July 23, floodwaters from a failed dam swallowed entire villages, killing 39 people and displacing thousands. Are innocent villagers paying the price for country’s ambitious dream of becoming the ‘battery of Asia’?
As surging waters swallowed the ground floor of Vee Keoheuy’s home, she hoisted herself out the window onto a rickety boat with her husband, children and grandchildren – in the dark. Officials had told her neighbours in Ban Mai that heavy rains required the opening of a spillway. The reality was that some 40km upstream of the village, on the Xe Pian river in Attapeu province, southeastern Laos, hundreds of millions of cubic metres of water were gushing out of a dam that had failed and down into the Vang Ngao river.
Vee Keoheuy and her family found themselves at the mercy of a roar of floodwater that uprooted trees, ripped down power lines and collapsed her neighbours’ homes, washing them away down the Xe Kong river. Within minutes, their outboard engine sputtered and cut out.
“With no engine, we lost control of the boat. It hit a big tamarind tree and smashed into pieces,” Vee Keoheuy says. “My daughter tried to keep my grandson above the water. She told my husband to try and grab the other grandson, but all he caught were his clothes.”
Vee Keoheuy’s five-year-old grandson, Tah Eah, was gone, as was her 27-year-old son, Ngo. Her surviving son clawed his way onto the roof of a home that remained standing. Vee Keoheuy hung onto a chicken coop as her husband clung to a papaya tree with one hand and their remaining grandchild with the other.
“My daughter was crying as she’d lost her son and I told her to try to reach us,” says Vee Keoheuy.
Eventually it was the solid steel frame of a high-voltage transmission tower that provided the anchor they needed while waiting for help to arrive the next morning.
