Myanmar dam breach floods 85 villages, drives thousands from homes

YANGON (Reuters) - As many as 85 villages were flooded in Myanmar after a dam failed, unleashing waters that blocked a major highway and forced more than 63,000 people from their homes, a state-run newspaper said on Thursday.

The disaster spotlights safety concerns about dams in Southeast Asia after last month’s collapse of a hydroelectric dam in neighboring Laos that displaced thousands of people and killed at least 27.

Firefighters, troops and officials launched a desperate rescue effort on Wednesday after the spillway of an irrigation dam burst at Swar creek in central Myanmar, sending a torrent of water through villages and the nearby towns of Swar and Yedashe.

Flooding at the dam site has receded, Zaw Lwin Tun, the deputy director general of the Irrigation and Water Utilization Management Department, told the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.