Vientiane, July 26 (CGTN) -- At least 26 people have been confirmed dead with 131 people still missing and more than 3,000 awaiting rescue after a dam collapsed late Monday in a remote part of land-locked Laos, according to Laos authority.
State media showed pictures of villagers, some with young children, stranded on the roofs of submerged houses. Others showed villagers trying to board wooden boats to safety in Attapeu Province, the southernmost part of the country.
Officials have brought boats to evacuate people in San Sai district of Attapeu Province, where the Xe-Pian-Xe Namnoy hydropower dam is located, as water levels rise after the collapse, ABC Laos news reported.
“The disaster has claimed several lives, left hundreds of people missing and more than 1,300 families homeless,” it reported.
The South Korean company that has a stake in the project said part of a small supply dam was washed away and the company was cooperating with the Laos government to help rescue villagers near the site.
“We are running an emergency team and planning to help evacuate and rescue residents in villages near the dam,” a SK Engineering and Construction spokesman said.
The 1-billion-US-dollar project was to build two dams with five auxiliary dams used to hold water beyond what is held by the main dams.
Another official of SK Engineering and Construction said the company ordered the evacuation of 12 villages as soon as it became clear that the dam could collapse.
Later, the company said in a statement the upper part of the supply dam was lost by torrential rains on July 22 but its repair work did not go smoothly due to the rains and more portions of the dam were fractured and overflowed in the following day.
The South Korean foreign ministry said in a text message to reporters that 50 workers of the company and three from Korea Western Power Co. who were stationed at the construction site had been evacuated.
The dam collapsed at 8:00 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) on Monday, releasing 5 billion cubic meters of water and several hundred people are missing after homes were swept away, the Lao News Agency, adding that several people had died.
The prime minister of the Communist-run Southeast Asian nation, Thongloun Sisoulith, has suspended government meetings and led Cabinet members to monitor rescue and relief efforts in one of the affected areas, the state agency reported.
Laos experienced one of its worst natural disasters in 2013 when five major monsoon storms hit in a period of three months, and approximately 347,000 people were affected by severe flooding in that disaster.
The collapsed dam was expected to start commercial operations by 2019 and export 90 percent of its power to Thailand under a Power Purchase Agreement between the Xe-Pian-Xe Namnoy Power Company (PNPC) and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT).
The remaining 10 percent of power would be sold to the local grid under an agreement between the PNPC and the Electricite du Laos.
