223 Die as China Dam Bursts, Floods Villages

A dam burst in China’s remote western Qinghai province, releasing cascades of water that wiped out several villages and killed at least 223 people, officials and local health workers said Sunday.

Thousands of people were injured and many are missing since the dam broke about 11 p.m. Friday, flooding numerous villages, local television said.

Police in the provincial capital of Xining confirmed the television report Sunday that said at least 223 people had died. But police and provincial officials reached by telephone in Xining declined to give details.

“Local television reported that up to now the death count stands at 223, but there may still be others,” a doctor at People’s No. 1 Hospital in Xining said late Sunday.

Several Xining hospitals said they were treating patients airlifted or driven in from the disaster scene several hundred miles away.

“A big hole split open and the water rushed out, washing away several villages,” the television report said.

It was not immediately known what caused the failure of the dam at the Gouhou reservoir in Qinghai’s Hainan Tibet prefecture. The reservoir holds about 92 million cubic feet of water, the New China News Agency said.

Economic losses were estimated at more than $17 million, it said.

The news agency gave no explanation for the delay in reporting the accident. However, it is common practice for China’s state-controlled media to block news reporting of disasters until officials arrive at the scene.

The agency said the situation was under “good control” and that relief supplies arrived at the scene at midday Saturday.

It said that central government officials ordered an investigation into the cause of the accident and that Vice Premier Zhu Rongji had taken a personal interest in the welfare of victims.

“Zhu stressed the need to make the best possible arrangements for the disaster victims and to organize them to rebuild their homes and to resume a normal life,” the news agency said.

The economic losses are likely to be painful in Qinghai, a vast, impoverished region where nomadic herders and farmers try to coax life from arid, high-elevation plateaus.

The dam break could heighten concern about construction of one of the world’s biggest public works--a vast earthen dam blocking China’s powerful Yangtze river in the scenic Three Gorges.

Natural and man-made disasters kill many thousands of Chinese every year--with mining accidents alone taking an average of more than 10,000 a year.

Seasonal flooding is a major killer, taking between 1,500 and 2,500 lives a year.