Typhoon Nina: The Catastrophic Collapse of the Banqiao Reservoir

Billed as the unbreakable "e;Iron Dam"e; and a triumph of socialist engineering, the Banqiao Reservoir in Henan province was designed to withstand a once-in-a-millennium flood. But in August 1975, the stationary Typhoon Nina dumped more than a year's worth of rain onto the region in just 24 hours. The resulting failure triggered a domino effect of 62 dam collapses, unleashing an apocalyptic wall o...