‘I Think All Those People Are Dead’: Laos Dam Survivors Seek Word of Neighbors

Quoted: “It’s hard to know if they were lying now or if they were incompetent before,” said Ian Baird, an expert on Laos at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, referring to Laotian officials. But he said the confusion was to be expected, with a risk-adverse authoritarian government in a poor country that is not accustomed to responding to disasters of this magnitude.