Example: 'Even when a rupture appears sudden, slow violence is still pertinent, as was seen in the collapse
of Laos’ Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy saddle dam. The dam’s collapse in July 2018 sent 350 million
cubic meters of water down the Bolaven Plateau. The water spread across 46 square kilometers,
engulfing six village settlements and their paddy fields in Sanamxai District, Attapeu Province
(Latrubesse et al. 2020). At the time the flood was depicted as a sudden “wall of water”, but it is
now clear that several hours elapsed between the dam collapse and the arrival of the flood wave
at downstream settlements (ibid., 15). This gave people in affected areas some time to call for
their household members, collect some belongings, and get into boats before the full force of the
wave hit. Yet failures in state warning systems meant that in one village at least eight people
were reportedly killed. The flood spread over the following days to a much larger area of
Sanamxai District and across the border into Cambodia, prompting evacuations (Mekong River
Commission 2018). Even farmers as far downstream as the Mekong Delta observed the flood
pulse (Hirsch 2020). While these immediate physical impacts played out over several months,
the dam breach and its effects also had historical, socio-political causes. Like the toxic environments discussed earlier, dams are sites of slow violence where
communities often experience cumulative displacement and material deprivation, as well as
intimidation and physical harassment (Blake and Barney 2018, Milne 2021). In the Xe Pian-Xe
Namnoy case, the dam’s stop-start construction history created great uncertainty as well as
displacing around 2,700 villagers. Livelihood stress and conflict between different ethnic groups
led some villagers to return to their original homes, where they faced police and military pressure
and became vulnerable to the 2018 dam collapse (Baird 2021).