Most of you have never ever heard of this, and those of you that have don't know the chronology of certain events.
First, meet William Mulholland:
Here is the St. Francis Dam:
Update: thank god someone actually reads this crap. First, like it says at the bottom of this page, stuff gets put up here without credit some of the time because the internet does not always accurately source the images you enjoy here. It is my pleasure and responsibility to remove anything immediately if asked to. The above photo belongs to:
Pony R. Horton
www.stfrancisdam.blogspot.com
www.gravityarchmedia.blogspot.com
check out his sites, they are very interesting
Pony has also told us that the water pouring out of the center was supposed to do that. Again, I thank you for the correction.
Uh, the thing still exploded and killed hundreds of people so i'm not so sure this design is the one I want to use when they build the dam at Sunset and Laurel Canyon. Cheers! cg
An aerial view:
How was Mulholland, not a trained geologist, to know that this soil was not stable? Here is an after picture:
There is something wrong with you if that does not take your breath away, even if just a little. Here is the broken Mulholland, who had deemed the dam safe only 24 hours before, inspecting the damage.
And as it looks today:
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The St. Francis Dam Disaster
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3 comments:
In the color image of the dam you show with the water running; that water flow is PERFECTLY NORMAL!
That is a release of water through one of the dam's 5 outlet pipes on the day of its dedication in 1926.
By the way, that colorized image of the dam is one of my original colorized matte paintings created for my film, A TEST OF INTEGRITY, based on original photos provided by to me by Dr. J. David Rogers.
I don't mind if you use my images, but would have been nice of you to ask permission before doing so.
Pony R. Horton
www.stfrancisdam.blogspot.com
www.gravityarchmedia.blogspot.com
There you go, Pony. I mean for these things to spark people's interest in these subjects, and hope this inspires people to check out your work, too.
Always happy to help spread accurate info, and thanks so much for the name credit!
Thought you might like to know that this disaster was actually the result of a number of factors, and not just one cause.
The dam was raised by 11% during construction, from 180 feet (according to plans) to 205 feet, but was NOT correspondingly built-out at the base to compensate for the additional height. This caused the dam's center of gravity to shift from the base of the structure to well out front, downstream of the dam.
The aggregate for the concrete came out of the riverbed at the base, but was not properly washed, which can lead to weakness in bonding to the concrete.
The concrete itself was only about 140 lbs, rather than the 180-200 lbs it should have been. Add that to its' natural pourous-ness, and the concrete was quite saturated and therefore unstable.
Finally, the dam was erroneously built upon an ancient landslide on the left abutment. This foundation was a granitic mica schist with seams of talc between its' layers, and when subjected to the weight of the reservior, the old landslide let go, and both hit the dam from behind as well as washing out from under the left abutment, allowing the structure to collapse into the scoured-out abutment.
Had Mulholland known of these factors (he did not) he would have raised the alarm himself prior to the failure.
However, being the decent man he was, he accepted full responsibility, and the disaster haunted him for the rest of his life.
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