30. The Banqiao Collapse Was History’s Deadliest Structural Failure
The Banqiao dams disaster was history’s deadliest structural failure. It unleashed the third deadliest flood ever, devastated 30 cities and counties, inundated 3 million acres, and destroyed nearly 7 million houses. More than 10 million people were impacted, and the death toll might have been as high as 240,000.
The disaster occurred at the tail end of Mao Zedong’s regime and his Cultural Revolution, and the Chinese authorities did their best to hide the extent of the catastrophe. Solid information – or as solid as governmental information ever gets in China – did not emerge until the 1990s, when a former Minister of Water Resources wrote a preface for a book in which details were revealed for the first time.