The reservoir that was.
This just in – a dam burst in Kazakhstan killing dozens and injuring hundreds. A particularly quick Wiki-response was in the offing, perhaps due to the romanticized notions of famous dam-burstings and their apocalyptic wrath. This particular dam is identified as the “Kyzyl-Agash” [Red Tree] dam, which I guess provides electricity and/or water for drinking/agriculture for the nearby town of Kyzyl-Agash. The official response has been typically harsh, and the search for a scapegoat has already begun. Considering the sorry state of even the US’s infrastructure, it doesn’t take a particularly brave leap of faith to assume Kazakhstan’s is also below par. Nor can I say this response from Kazakhstan is unexpected, considering any democracy’s knee-jerk reaction to public disaster is a lynch mob. [See? Kazakhstan IS a democracy!]
My heart goes out to the people, and I hope that they made find help and comfort with friends and family next week with the coming of spring and the Наурыз holiday. Perhaps the town will cease to exist, as I imagine the reservoir was an important source of water, employment, electricity, and irrigation. If the dam is rebuilt, one can hope its maintenance will be taken seriously and plans made for a dam capable of withstanding any level of spring snow-melt.
This particular dam was not particularly close to any large urban areas, being rather close to the Kazakh-Chinese border, about a third of the way from Almaty up to Ust’ [Өскемен]. To make recovery and repair problems worse, the town and dam are on the “far side” of Lake Balkhash, quite off the beaten path of developed Kazakhstan.
Perhaps I am not alone in being reminded of this story, which pops up every couple of years to titillate and terrorize global readers. Tajikistan, being home to a lot of water at high elevation, is the atomic bomb factory of “Gravity+Water=Chaos” equations. This terror of the possible disaster might well be fed by the American culture of Disaster Scenarios, and our own terrible history of dam tragedies, topped off by the unspeakable terror of the Johnstown nightmare of the late 19th century. A dam burst, killing over 2000 people in a deluge beyond biblical proportions, forcing narrators to empty their pockets of all the horrible adjectives and Revelations-strewn metaphors in their attempts to describe the terror felt by the eye-witnesses and stranded survivors.
This post was written by...
Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 153 posts on Registan.net.
Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.
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Couple of things: This is not exactly fresh news, since it happened a full week ago. Also, according to the latest Emergency Situations Ministry figures, there are 40 confirmed dead at the moment of writing, not 47 as suggested in the link.
That link to the story about Lake Sarez is quite timely, however, given the ongoing war of words between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. One argument I have seen made by Tajik experts is that a rupture in the dam that created Sarez would be just as disastrous as any earthquake destroying Roghun Dam. So what are you complaining about Roghun for when Mother Nature will wreak so much more havoc, goes the argument. This is possibly an accurate observation, although not particularly helpful.
On another point, as you note, mourning over the Kyzyl-Agash disaster quickly turned to finger-pointing, which is perhaps understandable. Now, Kazakh regional officials are reacting with theatrical haste to evacuate people from areas at risk of flooding all over the country, but this is hardly going to do much to address the core problem.
Nazarbayev huffs and puffs with indignation at local irresponsibility and callousness every time something like this happens, as though it is not the rampant crony-ism that he presides over that explains why it is that venal personal interests and corruption always seem to win over accountability, good governance and efficiency in Kazakhstan.
When the money was flowing, far too little was done to effect a radical overhaul of crumbling basic Soviet-era infrastructure, because people were presumably too busy lining their own pockets.
It is enraging to see how finding scapegoats amid this heart-breaking tragedy and idiotic grandstanding by that senile old coot is what passes for leadership in Kazakhstan. (That sentence, incidentally, could easily land me in jail and lead to closure of this Web site in Kazakhstan, so who knows that you shouldn’t be censoring this comment).
And with Nazarbayev’s halfwit adviser, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, swearing blind that the great leader proposes to stand again in 2012, this madness looks set to continue indefinitely.
Ekspeditsya,
Why do we always need to find some political implication in a tragedy? Accidents happen in societies and industries, even when H&S procedures seem in place. Most of the times it is attributed to what specialists call Swiss Cheese Effect.
I am not really familiar with the whole situation in Kyzyl-Agash but, from those few articles I have read, I understand that it was a private reservoir that during Soviet times was used as a fish pond and irrigation water reservoir and privatized in 90s. The owner used the reservoir for accumulation of water, which was sold to farmers during irrigation season. As you can understand the owner simply neglected maintenance and monitoring of the dam condition during the winter season. And it breached during the spring flood.
And of course, there was a stupid official who failed to respond when the warning was issued.
I do not believe there was any electric generator at the dam otherwise there had to be at least some sort of control.
I’ve seen it around the world, these small private reservoirs are not given proper attention, as many other hazards around us. Dams are among some of the most unstable and potentially dangerous constructions, and they tend to be neglected. Hydro-electric dams, mine-tailing reservoirs, fish ponds, they are all ticking time bombs.
In our particular case, the immediate cause of the tragedy is the high run-off and dam instability. The underlying causes are the owners negligence, lack of proper control from regulatory officials, lack of emergency preparedness procedures and implementation, lack of responsibilities. The investigation will probably reveal some corruption related issues, e.g. unlawful privatization. However, I wouldn’t say it was Nazarbayev’s fault. It is a little too much.