PRADO DAM, CORONA, CA - LOS ANGELES TIMES | May 17th, 2019 - Story by LOUIS SAHAGUN
Federal engineers are raising alarms that a “significant flood event” could breach the spillway of Southern California’s aging Prado Dam and potentially inundate dozens of Orange County communities from Disneyland to Newport Beach. After conducting an assessment of the 78-year-old structure earlier this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it was raising the dam’s risk category from “moderate” to “high urgency.” Learn More
GUARDIAN NEWS - Feb 2019 - Video shows the exact moment a dam burst in Brazil on 25 January, 2019. The dam break at an iron ore mining complex operated by the minerals firm Vale killed at least 110 people and 238 who are still missing . Cars can be seen driving around desperately trying to escape as a dramatic gush of mud approaches. The surge buried buildings adjoining the dam and several parts of the nearby city of Brumadinho. Learn More about the aftermath of this man-made catastrophe...
NBCDSW - May 16, 2019 - Authorities are asking people in a Central Texas city to conserve water after a spillway crumbled, emptying a lake of much of its water. Dramatic video showed the spillway at Lake Dunlap collapse, sending a wall of water cascading through the open middle gate and to the Guadalupe River below. Lake Dunlap is located just south of New Braunfels and provides water for the city of Kyle, about 30 miles to the north, KXAN reported.
In the evening of Feb. 11, 2017, the Dam's emergency spillway began carrying water. Water flowed onto the earthen hillside below, per design. Headward erosion threatened to collapse the concrete weir. On Feb. 12, an evacuation of 180,000 residents was ordered. Cost of repairs was projected at $400+ million. Investigators found 24 possible causes for spillway failure, including a faulty drainage system, variations in concrete thickness and corrosion in the structure’s rebar." Learn More
The St. Francis Dam was a curved concrete gravity dam, built to create a large regulating and storage reservoir for the city of Los Angeles. It was located in San Francisquito Canyon of the Sierra Pelona Mountains. On March 12, 1928, the dam failed. The resulting flood took the lives of at least 431 people. The collapse is one of the worst American civil engineering disasters and the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Learn More
In the 2015 Movie San Andreas, Hollywood took a stab at depicting a large dam failing. Let's say the Hoover dam broke, some sort of tremendous earthquake or an asteroid strike or some other natural disaster were to somehow eliminate the Hoover dam in one fell swoop. What would happen?
The first thing is that 10 trillion gallons of water would move as quickly as it could out of the lake and down the river in a huge tsunami of water. The Hoover dam is located in a desert area not hugely inhabited below the dam, but there are still some sizeable populations. Lake Havasu City, population 40,000, is about the biggest town in the United States along the river. Bullhead city, population 30,000 is also close to the dam. Needles, California; Blythe, California; and Laughlin, Nevada all have populations of around 10,000 people as well. Learn More
The Teton Dam was an earthen dam on the Teton River in Idaho, United States. It was built by the Bureau of Reclamation, one of eight federal agencies authorized to construct dams. Located in the eastern part of the state, between Fremont and Madison counties, it suffered a catastrophic failure on June 5, 1976, as it was filling for the first time. The collapse of the dam resulted in the deaths of 11 people and 13,000 cattle. The dam cost about $100 million to build and the federal government paid over $300 million in claims related to its failure. Total damage estimates have ranged up to $2 billion. The dam has not been rebuilt... Learn More
In the 2007 Movie Evan Almighty, a greedy developer and his cronies know there are issues with an upstream dam yet move ahead with plans, devastating the community below. In the movie, No one dies because Evan Baxter is called by God to build a modern day ark which saves the town's people from certain death. But we don't live in the movies -- there is no ark to save us.
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