In the top photos, it looks like the concrete was covered with about an inch of stucco and that is what is cracking.
My first thought was that they troweled the fines to the top but you don’t trowell down inside the forms.
It looks like the surface was finished to provide a better appearance to a rough formed finish. There are also what appear to be concrete pavers that are loose and damaged. I didn’t see any structural cracks in the dam.
The fault along the earthen dam is of real concern.
Agreed. If it was a public works project, they probably took the cheapest route. I thought the surface was clay tile. They definitely wouldn’t spend time trowelling.
The worrying thing about the fault is that it’s probably even bigger somewhere below.
I read online that many of these China dams are just concrete shells (walls) that are filled with loose debris and then capped.
Aftershock flattens 71,000 homes
52 minutes ago
A powerful aftershock destroyed tens of thousands of homes in central China, causing hundreds of new casualties and straining recovery efforts from the country’s worst earthquake in three decades.
The fresh devastation came after a magnitude 5.8 aftershock - among the most powerful recorded since the initial May 12 quake, according to the US Geological Survey. The China National Seismic Network said the aftershock was the strongest of dozens in the nearly two weeks after the disaster.
~SNIP~
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKTHEtvVj5rUVa0fHki_h3PEcWsA