The Banqiao Reservoir Dam (simplified Chinese: 板桥水库大坝;
traditional Chinese: 板橋水庫大壩; pinyin: Bǎnqiáo Shuǐkù Dàbà) is a
dam on the River Ru in Zhumadian Prefecture, Henan province,
China. Its failure in 1975 caused more casualties than any other
dam failure in history. It was subsequently rebuilt. The Banqiao
dam and Shimantan Reservoir Dam (simplified Chinese: 石漫滩水库大坝;
traditional Chinese: 石漫灘水庫大壩; pinyin: Shímàntān Shuǐkù Dàbà) are
among 62 dams in Zhumadian Prefecture of China's Henan Province
that failed catastrophically or were intentionally destroyed in
1975 during Typhoon Nina. The dam failures killed an estimated
171,000 people; 11 million people lost their homes. It also
caused the sudden loss of 18 GW of power, the equivalent of
roughly 9 very large modern coal-fired power stations or about
20 nuclear reactors, equalling about 1/3 the peak demand on the
Irish National Grid. Construction of the Banqiao dam began in
April 1951 on the Ru River with the help of Soviet consultants
as part of a project to c