28 March 2022

The company responsible for Laos’ worst ever dam collapse more than three years ago announced [...] that its rebuilt dam would begin releasing water, scaring downstream residents, including survivors of the disaster.

[...]

Many of the returned residents were shaken [...] by PNPC’s announcement that it would start discharging water the next day, forcing many of them to temporarily uproot their lives once again to get to higher ground.

“Oh, we were panicking and we were so worried that the dam would collapse again. They should’ve warned us at least one week earlier,” a resident of Tam Mayor Village, one of four villages downstream in Sanamxay district, home to many survivors of the 2018 disaster, told RFA’s Lao Service.

“Many people didn’t know anything about the warning because they weren’t at home. Most of them were at farms or rice fields,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“As soon as we received the warning, we moved immediately to the hills nearby,” another survivor told RFA.

[...]