On March 28, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Myanmar, the most powerful seismic event of the year The earthquake occurred along the Sagaing Fault, with the epicenter 16 kilometers from the town of Sagaing, but it cut a trail of destruction reaching over 1,000 kilometers, even taking down a high-rise building in Bangkok, Thailand.
Inside Myanmar, the 7.9-magnitude quake had claimed over 3,770 lives according to data one month after the tragedy occurred. That’s in addition to over a hundred victims in Bangkok.
The quake was a “wake-up call,” said leading Thai seismologist Dr. Punya Charusiri, who has studied earthquake-prone regions of both Myanmar and Laos. “The Sagaing Fault is more dangerous than we ever thought,” he told The Diplomat.
“It also calls for more attention to the increasing danger of building dams in earthquake zones.”
Instead of heeding nature’s warning, however, Myanmar’s junta chief and a Chinese hydropower company are still pushing to revive the massive Myitsone Dam project – also located on the same Sagaing fault line, only 100 kilometers away from the epicenter of Myanmar’s March earthquake.
Myanmar’s General Min Aung Hlaing lamented on May 22 that the country would not be suffering power outages now if the suspended Myitsone Dam had gone ahead. A China-Myanmar joint committee continues to plan the revival of this huge dam, which had been suspended by then-President Thein Sein in 2011 under pressure from a strong environment lobby and safety concerns.
A massive dam built on a major earthquake-prone fault line is a nightmare scenario, say dam-risk experts.
In recent years, hydropower dams have suffered several setbacks to their much-vaunted claims to be a safe and reliable source of energy. After an earthquake in Tibet in January this year, the Chinese authorities detected problems, including cracks, in five out of 14 hydropower dams in the region. Of the five, three dams were emptied. In Tingri, the epicenter of the earthquake, the walls of one dam tilted, prompting the evacuation of about 1,500 people from six villages downstream.
In spite of the dangerous nexus of extreme weather and the tendency of many dam developers to select earthquake-prone locations, dam safety standards often lag behind in their analysis of the risks, according to an engineering and disaster risk expert. Myanmar is the most earthquake-prone country in Southeast Asia, but northern Laos, where a cascade of dams is slated to be built along the Mekong River, is also highly vulnerable.
On the lower Mekong, a cascade of dams has already been scheduled for construction in a major active fault zone, subject to earthquakes and frequent seismic eruptions.
Several earthquakes have hit areas near the Xayaburi dam (130 km south of Luang Prabang), which has been operational since 2019. An earthquake of magnitude 6.2 hit northern Laos and Thailand, close to the Xayaburi dam, in 2019, but luckily, the dam escaped serious damage.
Will the next big earthquake be in Luang Prabang province?
Many Lao people living in the celebrated UNESCO World Heritage city of Luang Prabang are opposed to the ongoing construction of a massive 1,440 MW dam only 25 km from the city. The dam site is also perilously close to an active earthquake fault – only 8.6 km away.
Many fear that such a large dam could trigger an earthquake that might unleash a disaster similar to the 2018 Xe Pian Xe Namnoy Dam collapse. (This dam collapse was not linked to an earthquake, however.)
The Luang Prabang dam is currently under construction and is scheduled to start operations in 2030.
Thailand companies led by CK Power are building this 1,400 MW dam only 25 kilometers from the UNESCO World Heritage town of Luang Prabang on the Mekong in earthquake-prone northern Laos. It is due to be completed in 2030. Photo courtesy of RFA Lao Service.
All new hydropower projects on the mainstream Mekong are subject to the Mekong River Commission’s mandate to facilitate a six-month consultative process – known as the PNPCA – involving the four MRC member states and other stakeholders. The MRC Secretariat facilitates peaceful dialogue and diplomacy, but it lacks any regulatory powers to regulate critical issues of environmental protection and dam safety.
The Luang Prabang dam, which is being built by a consortium of Thai developers led by CK Power, is the most controversial so far on the lower Mekong River.
According to MRC’s original technical review in 2020, the dam posed an “extreme risk “ to the celebrated UNESCO World Heritage Site. MRC technical experts emphasized the need to adopt the very highest standards of dam safety for this project, but the objective is to consider how best to mitigate the dam’s negative impacts on the environment and issues of dam safety, rather than tackling the question of whether the dam should be built at all.
Some independent experts question whether the Mekong River Commission and the dam developers have adopted the “highest standards” they profess in dealing with the threat from large dams located in seismically active locations.
The MRC document paid lip service to the need to protect the UNESCO World Heritage Site, but when the UNESCO monitoring mission concluded the dam site should be moved based on the “precautionary principle” in 2022, both the Lao government and the MRC shunned the U.N. body’s report.
According to Assistant Professor Pavisorn Chuenchum, the deputy head of Water Resources Engineering at Chulalungkorn University, “A robust dam safety assessment in earthquake-prone areas should combine both engineering modelling, and detailed geophysical and seismological field work.”
Such an assessment should take into account Japanese Professor Hiroshi Hori’s extensive research. In his book “The Mekong: Environment and Development,” Hori warned, “The chances for earthquakes to occur in earthquake-prone zones increase in accordance with the effects of either water impoundment or reservoir operation.”
MRC technical experts are nearly all engineering graduates. No doubt they are very competent in their field of engineering modelling, but their conclusions lack the insights to be gained from earthquake field studies.
Seismological fieldwork is exactly what Dr. Charusiri has carried out over many years as an associate professor at Chulalungkorn University’s faculty of geology.
“I visited Luang Prabang’s active earthquake fault site three times,” he told The Diplomat in 2024. “It is only 8.6 km from the dam. It is very dangerous to build a dam so close to an active fault. I am sure there will be a major earthquake in the future.”
The primary concern of MRC engineers is to establish the capacity of dam walls for earthquake resistance. But Cheunchum, who teaches at the Center of Excellence in Disaster and Risk Management Information Systems (DRMIS), explained that testing for dam resilience is not enough. “Seismologists, geologists, and disaster risk experts provide essential checks and balances. A governance structure where geoscientists have greater influence in decision-making, particularly in seismic-prone regions, would better protect public safety.”
The Diplomat asked the MRC to respond to Cheunchum’s analysis and the warnings from Charusiri. The MRC press officer said in a statement that “a dam safety review panel (DSRP) was established, and conducted two site visits: one in September 2023 and another in October 2024. It comprises three international dam experts with advanced degrees specializing in dam safety, hydraulic engineering, and geotechnical engineering.”
But these dam safeguards make no reference to any skills in “detailed geophysical and seismological field work,” which independent experts like Cheunchum have insisted are crucial to dam risk assessments. The MRC statement did not respond specifically to the research by independent experts interviewed by The Diplomat.
Dr. Saphan Singharajwaranpan is another seismologist who has warned about the threats of earthquakes in northern Laos. The former head of geology at Chiang Mai University is aware of the planned cascade of Mekong dams and their potential to trigger earthquakes. Before his retirement, he told the author, “If precautions and dam-safeguards are not in place, and supervised by an international body of inspection, then there is a danger with a large earthquake that the dam wall might collapse, triggering an inland tsunami effect.”
Even though the MRC has confirmed an international body for inspection is now in place, does it satisfy the need for expert earthquake investigation?
Cheunchum pointed out that “the hydropower industry often funds or commissions engineering assessments, creating potential conflicts of interest. Without independent oversight and strong regulatory frameworks, danger assessments are at risk of displaying bias or downplaying the worst-case scenarios.”
In practice, MRC experts are unlikely to blow the whistle on even the worst-case scenario. Instead, it is environmental experts, geologists, and NGOs that expose the risks, leak documents, and pressure governments to cancel or suspend dangerous dam projects.
Given their engineering backgrounds, the MRC experts seem more inclined to accept the safety assurances given from AFRY (formerly Poyry), an international hydropower corporation hired by the Lao government to supervise such issues as dam safety, than the critics who argue the dam is too risky to go ahead.
AFRY, the project supervisor of engineering and dam design, has issued assurances that the Luang Prabang dam has adopted International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) guidelines and that the dam has been designed to withstand extreme earthquakes However, ICOLD is not independent but is also part of the hydropower industry.
The MRC’s final technical review on this dam, after modelling, concluded that the seismic risks are at an “acceptably low level.” But an earthquake expert’s conclusion was dramatically different.
“It is very dangerous, dam without an earthquake field investigation,” Charusiri warned. “There will be a big earthquake. After the dam is built, I am sure it will not be safe for residents of Luang Prabang to live there anymore.”
With the March 2025 Myanmar earthquake, the UNESCO report, and the independent risk assessments, warning bells are pealing on multiple fronts. The Lao government and the MRC should suspend the ongoing construction to take the time to review public safety issues and conduct a comprehensive dam risk assessment.