Would you have time to grab your BOB?
In Googling the nearly catastrophic failure of southern California's San Fernando Dam during the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, I came across this interesting overview of major dam disasters done for the state of Oregon.
I had forgotten about the Teton Dam disaster in Idaho in 1976. Now vaguely recall news reports of it.
http://www.oregon.gov/owrd/SW/docs/dam_safety/M2_Mills_%20Historical_Dam_Failures_and_Modes.pdfHad no knowledge of
California's "St. Francis Dam Disaster" -- the "worst civil engineering failure of the 20th Century" (according to a Smithsonian magazine article). Very interesting article that chronicles southern California's water wars and the remarkable trajectory of one William Mulholland.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/oc...0954543/?no-ist"Completed on May 4, 1926, the St. Francis Dam stood nearly 200 feet tall, 700 feet long and covered 600 acres. Built into a sparsely populated mountainous canyon about 47 miles northeast from downtown Los Angeles, the area’s residents consisted mostly of farmers and workers at the dam or hydroelectric power plants, known as Powerhouse #1 and Powerhouse #2. It was the largest arch-supported dam in the world, with the ability to hold over 12 billion gallons of water, about two years worth of water for the city of Los Angeles. It cost $1.3 million to build, which was actually under budget - a tendency for a Mulholland-led project. It was Mulholland himself who opened the gate on the morning of May 13 to fill up the reservoir at a rate of 70 million gallons a day.
Less than two years later, the dam collapsed."
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