The Dam Disaster China Kept Secret for 30 Years

In August 1975, the deadliest dam failure in history happened in central China. More than sixty dams failed in a single night — and for thirty years, the full story was kept secret. This is the true story of the Banqiao Dam: the "Iron Dam" built on the Ru River in 1951–52, the hydrologist Chen Xing who recommended twelve floodgates (it was built with five) and warned against stacking dozens of small dams on the same rivers, Typhoon Nina stalling over Henan with ten times the forecast rain in a single day, the telephones that failed and the orders that never arrived, the water running over the crest at about one o'clock on 8 August 1975, the chain of dams that followed, the long silence — and the new dam built to let a great flood through. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 The deadliest dam failure in history 1:14 The river that kept flooding 2:11 The Iron Dam 3:29 The man who wanted twelve gates 5:14 The storm that would not move 6:50 The night of 7 August 7:42 One o'clock 8:35 Sixty-two dams 9:21 The silence 10:26 Why it really fell 11:20 What changed 12:18 The plain today 👥 On the death toll: the official figure is about 26,000 people killed by the flood itself (1990s official history). Other estimates are much higher — the Henan Party Committee's preliminary count in 1975 was 85,600; members of China's national advisory body (1980s) and Human Rights Watch (1995) put the total at about 230,000, counting the famine and disease that followed. The true number is not known. 📚 Sources • Association of State Dam Safety Officials — Dam failure case study: Banqiao Dam (China, 1975): https://damsafety.org/reference/dam-f... • "1975 Banqiao Dam failure", "Banqiao Dam" and "Chen Xing (hydrologist)", Wikipedia (citing People's Daily, Qian Gang, Yi Si / Human Rights Watch 1995 and Chinese official histories) • Yang et al., Typhoon Nina and the August 1975 flood over central China (NOAA repository): https://repository.library.noaa.gov/v... • "China tropical cyclone rainfall climatology", Wikipedia (Linzhuang 1,062 mm in 24 h; 1,629 mm in 3 days) 🎞 Archive: Typhoon Nina, 2 August 1975 — NOAA weather satellite image (public domain). Some scenes are AI-generated reconstructions, labelled "Reconstruction" on screen; no real people are depicted by AI, and no victims are shown. Maps (schematic), diagrams and documents are illustrations made with code. Original music. Why It Fell — the true stories behind history's great engineering failures. New story every Saturday. #banqiao #history #documentary