Major dam failure in China

One thing is for sure they failed to track weather and to lower water levels before heavy flooding in upper level.
This is extremely important in areas that get heavy rains and those surrounded by mountains where snow melts and water level can rise quickly. The dam had to have emergency water discharging provisions in its design and tested on regular basis.
True, but this CAN be a political nightmare if they do this. As I have said earlier, you are basically picking winners and playing god on who would be impacted, and they have populations who were there for centuries if not longer in the same region (villagers), long before governments were overthrown every several hundred years let alone the in power today.

It is not like in the US where most of the lands ownerships are recent and you can just tell the owners they have to move and sell due to eminent domain. A lot of the attitudes are "the clan" own this place since several hundred years ago, even if some of them die in a flood there will be remaining members to rebuild the place and carry on the family name. The emotional baggage to sell the ancestor lands and relocate is huge (think Native American reservation).

A couple years ago they flood a low ground near Beijing. It was a heavy but understandable decision because common sense would say it is better to flood 600k villagers than a capital of a nation that house 22M. But this is not as black and white between a 200k rural town vs a 2M medium size city.
 
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Regarding civil engineering failures, there are huge numbers of them out there, and designing earthquake proof 25 story buildings would be a major effort, but dumbing it down and saying a modern concrete building design had no rebar in the concrete is not very plausible and of course would be totally negligent. We need more close up photos of the structures. I don’t believe you could get a concrete tower to 25 stories without rebar. The city of Calgary has plenty of 25 story buildings constructed of reinforced concrete. They all contain rebar.
 
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The Anchor Lake dam on the Mississippi just about failed a few weeks ago. Took some extraordinary measures to divert the water under It somehow I believe to keep it from failing.

We have lots of marginal dams in the USA. The army corps somehow manages to juggle the water around and keep them from failing. Like the guy with the spinning plates.
 
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Which one of these is that?
 
True, but this CAN be a political nightmare if they do this. As I have said earlier, you are basically picking winners and playing god on who would be impacted, and they have populations who were there for centuries if not longer in the same region (villagers), long before governments were overthrown every several hundred years let alone the in power today.

It is not like in the US where most of the lands ownerships are recent and you can just tell the owners they have to move and sell due to eminent domain. A lot of the attitudes are "the clan" own this place since several hundred years ago, even if some of them die in a flood there will be remaining members to rebuild the place and carry on the family name. The emotional baggage to sell the ancestor lands and relocate is huge (think Native American reservation).

A couple years ago they flood a low ground near Beijing. It was a heavy but understandable decision because common sense would say it is better to flood 600k villagers than a capital of a nation that house 22M. But this is not as black and white between a 200k rural town vs a 2M medium size city.
Good points. I recall someone at Bittog said " China has a billion people" The truth is that China has 1.4 Billion people. He was out 400 million people. His rounding error was more than the ENTIRE population of the USA which is currently 340 million people. Managing that many people is an incredible task.
 
Regarding civil engineering failures, there are huge numbers of them out there, and designing earthquake proof 25 story buildings would be a major effort, but dumbing it down and saying a modern concrete building design had no rebar in the concrete is not very plausible and of course would be totally negligent. We need more close up photos of the structures. I don’t believe you could get a concrete tower to 25 stories without rebar. The city of Calgary has plenty of 25 story buildings constructed of reinforced concrete. They all contain rebar.

It looks like there was some rebar, but nothing compared to the amount we would have here.

https://apnews.com/article/earthqua...ld-buildings-6ef83f995a311c03dbbbba413d046fa5

Does Venezuela get a lot of quakes that require earthquake fortified buildings? I'd assume that if they do not, then their building codes for quake-proof buildings would be as robust as a high-rise in our Midwest. Two back-to-back 7.5 and 7.1 quakes is dangerous in all cases.
 
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they'll figure it out. they got the resources to build underwater war islands I mean the country used more cement in the last 20 years than America has used in 150 years.
They actually have changed the wobble of the earth..slightly.
 
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