"Laos dam collapes: Hundreds are missing as homes are swept away", 24 July 2018

Hundreds of people were missing...after a billion-dollar hydropower dam that was under construction in Laos collapsed, killing several people and displacing more than 6,600 others, a state news agency said.

KPL, the official Lao news agency, reported that the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydroelectric dam collapsed at 8 p.m. on Monday, releasing five billion cubic meters of water (roughly 175 billion cubic feet) and sweeping away homes in the southern province of Attapeu, which lies along the country’s border with Vietnam and Cambodia. The agency did not give an exact death toll.

Heavy rain and flooding caused the collapse, according to a South Korean engineering and construction company that Reuters said was building the dam.

The company, SK Engineering & Construction Co., has sent helicopters, boats and personnel to aid rescue operations, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement...

Laos is a landlocked authoritarian state and one of the poorest countries in Asia. The 410-megawatt dam was being built as a joint venture of the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Power Company, SK E&C and several other companies, the KPL agency said. Construction began in 2013, KPL reported...

Hydropower dams are a major source of energy in Laos and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. But they are also controversial, in part because they often displace rural poor and cause severe impacts on fisheries and watersheds.

Last year, Radio Free Asia news service, funded by the United States government, reported that more than 100 families in three villages near the dam were facing forced eviction. R.F.A. quoted an unidentified resident as saying that villagers there did not want to move to the land the Laotian government had offered them as compensation, which they said was not suitable for farming...