Does the Ethiopian earthquake threaten the Renaissance Dam?… A Sudanese minister clarifies

In the last few hours, shocking videos from Ethiopia have widely spread on social media, showing columns of thick smoke rising terrifyingly from the depths of cracked land, while earthquakes and tremors continued violently, revealing that something unprecedented had happened.

While these unusual scenes that swept Ethiopia caused a state of panic, they brought back old nightmares about the possibility of the collapse of the giant Renaissance Dam.

The successive earthquakes that struck the Ethiopian plateau, the most prominent of which was a violent earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale in the capital, Addis Ababa, on Saturday morning, raised legitimate questions about the impact of these successive earthquakes on the massive dam.

Is the dam about to collapse?

Fears have amplified about the explosion of this huge water barrier that holds behind it a giant lake extending over 1,800 square kilometers and approximately 600 meters high. Imagine, in a single moment, this massive “water mountain” explodes, releasing 74 billion cubic meters of water that will sweep the lowlands with tremendous destructive force, destroying everything in its path.

With earthquakes increasing by 800%, the question has become more than just “will the dam collapse?” but “when will it happen?”

The Truth Behind the Fears

In the face of these growing concerns, Al-Arabiya.net spoke to Dr. Osman Al-Tom, the former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources in Sudan, who cut short these fears by saying, “Talk about the threat of the dam is exaggerated.”

Al-Tom concluded by confirming that “talk about the collapse of the Renaissance Dam due to earthquakes is nothing more than an exaggeration without any basis in truth, as the area in which the dam is located enjoys geological stability, and the engineering design of the dam fortifies its ability to confront natural disasters, which makes these fears far from reality.”