No One Had a Tongue to Speak by Utpal Sandesara

No One Had a Tongue to Speak by Utpal Sandesara

On August 11, 1979, after a week of extraordinary monsoon rains in the Indian state of Gujarat, the two mile-long Machhu Dam-II disintegrated. The waters released from the dam's massive reservoir rushed through the heavily populated downstream area, devastating the industrial city of Morbi and its surrounding agricultural villages. As the torrent's thirty-foot-tall leading edge cut its way through the Machhu River valley, massive bridges gave way, factories crumbled, and thousands of houses collapsed. While no firm figure has ever been set on the disaster's final death count, estimates in the flood's wake ran as high as 25,000. Despite the enormous scale of the devastation, few people today have ever heard of this terrible event. This book tells, for the first time, the suspenseful and multifaceted story of the Machhu dam disaster. Based on over 130 interviews and extensive archival research, the authors recount the disaster and its aftermath in vivid firsthand detail. The book presents important findings culled from formerly classified government documents that reveal the long-hidden failures that culminated in one of the deadliest floods in history. The authors follow characters whose lives were interrupted and forever altered by the flood; provide vivid first-hand descriptions of the disaster and its aftermath; and shed light on the never-completed judicial investigation into the dam's collapse.

Utpal Sandersara is a Harvard Frederick Sheldon Prize Fellow, and the son of a Machhu flood survivor. Tom Wooten is a teacher at the School for Creative Arts in New Orleans.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781616144319
ISBN 10	1616144319
Title	No One Had a Tongue to Speak
Author	Utpal Sandesara
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Prometheus Books
Year published	2011-07-24
Number of pages	411
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.