New China cover-up fears with world’s largest dam ‘on brink of collapse risking tidal wave that could wipe out cities’
CHINA is facing new cover-up claims amid fears the world’s biggest dam is about to collapse causing a tidal wave which could wipe out entire cities.
Sections of the vast Three Gorges Dam in the central Hubei Province are reported to have moved under enormous pressure sparked by torrential rains.
And concerns were mourning last night that the giant structure could collapse - sending a devastating 250 foot tidal wave surging hundreds of miles.
The 570-foot dam holds back a staggering 39 billion cubic metre reservoir of water so huge that it has a measurable effect on the rotation of the earth.
It is five times the size of America’s famous Hoover Dam and generates eleven times as much electricity, vital to millions of Chinese homes and businesses.
But rumours of structural faults in the walls of the 14-year-old dam have grown as heavy rains deluged the swollen Yangtze River.
China’s secretive leaders - already facing a backlash over the Covid-19 pandemic which started in Wuhan in Hubei Province - have played down the threat.
But authorities are said to have quietly ordered the evacuation of 38 million Chinese in the threatened zone - equating to more than half the population of the UK.
Heavy rainfall is forecast to continue to pound the Yangtze River basin in the coming days after localised floods claimed at least 141 lives..
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Experts sat a dam burst would send tidal wave roaring into the city of Yichang - which has a population of one million - and leave it 50 to 80 feet underwater.
Wuhan would be hit seven hours later and would be likely to be as much as six feet underwater for four months.
Dam authorities have been unavailable for comment - but China’s state-run Global Times quoted an official declaring the structure “safe and in good condition.”
