On 6th December around 3.30pm while at the office in Kota Kinabalu I received a call from a colleague telling me to hurry home to Penampang because “the Babagon dam is cracked and leaking – there’s going to be a big flood.”

Babagon dam, constructed in 1997, is the biggest dam in Sabah, and 70 metres tall.

View of the dam from the west [pic source]

2 satellite views of the dam (note the scale on bottom left) [pic source]

I called a few other people living in Penampang area : they already knew about it. In fact, everybody knows about it already.

When I called my house located near the river they said the river was flowing quicker than normal and its level was rising, which is what usually happens when water is manually released from the dam.

When I called a contact in the media, he said the police and fire department were already at the dam to check it out.

At 4.20pm he called again to inform that Corporate Dynamics Sdn Bhd, the operator of the dam confirmed that there’s no problem with the dam.

The next day, Daily Express carried a report that said 1 million cubic metres of water had escaped, causing Moyog river’s level to rise by a metre and that this had caused panic among those staying along the river, and that Corporate Dynamics Sdn Bhd General Manager Julian Liew said:

The problem started when a power supply interruption occurred around 1pm, causing the computerised programming system controlling the “still way gate” to be defective. As a result of the malfunction, the computer programming lost its communication with the system at the still way gate, resulting in the gate’s uncontrolled lower slide and water spilling over the gate. We managed to rectify the problem within 40 minutes. It was a very rare incident which had never happened before. A CCTV and monitoring system will be installed soon at the dam site, not only for security purpose but to monitor the dam.

The following picture from Google Maps shows that the dam is less than 10km from Donggongon Town, the commercial hub of Penampang:

Click on the thumbnail to see the full size pic:

Touch wood, the consequences of a dam collapse are very dire indeed.

2 case studies in point:

The Malpasset Dam (France) collapse of 1959. This dam was about the same size as the Babagon Dam: 60m high, 200m+ crest length. And the distance to the nearest big town is about the same: Frejus, a coastal town in the south of France, is about 7km from the dam. When its entire wall collapsed on 2nd December 1959, a water flood wall 40 meters high and moving at 70 km/h was created. In 20 minutes it reached Fréjus, the water flood wall now down to 3 metres high. More than 400 people were killed.

The Banqiao dam (China) collapse of 1975. It was 118 meters high. About 26,000 people died from flooding & another 145,000 died in the resulting epidemics and famine. Almost 6 million builings collapsed & 11 million residents affected. Survivors recalled: “The blare of the dam burst sounded like the sky was collapsing and the earth was cracking. Houses and trees disappeared all in a instant. Numerous corpses and bodies of cattle floated in water amid people’s wailing for help.”

Photograph taken of the Banqiao Dam after the disaster:

This is not to say all dams are going to end this way. There are many higher and older dams around the world still operating perfectly after many years.

… Bodies of cattle? No more need for cattle supplies then…

Source
Daily Express, 7th Dec 2007
Malpasset Dam disaster as simscience.org
Wikipedia: Malpasset Dam
Wikipedia: Banqiao Dam
People’s Daily Online: Banqiao Dam disaster, 1st August 2005

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