Short answer: Bureau of Reclamation's library Long answer: Read below It actually took some work to get the video, but I really wanted to see it, so in this case persistence paid. I had read about the dam breach in the book Nature Noir, and how the breach had been videotaped. The book was required reading for an outdoor recreation and parks management class I took. I highly recommend the book. Anyway, being an engineer (I take these classes just because I like them ), and living in Northern California, I became very curious about the dam. All I could find online was a reference to the National Archives copy of the video, and they are in DC, I am in California, and to get a copy from them would cost a lot of money. It was an archival copy and it would take a lot of work to get me a copy; I would have to go through a third party, lots of paperwork, etc. I called various universities and thought they may have a copy (everyone thought Berkeley would have a copy). None did. In the end, it was the librarian at the Bureau of Reclamation's Sacramento office that found me the video and made me a copy. She was really wonderful. I did have a hard time uploading it and am still not sure if it all got uploaded. Glad others find it interesting too.
+Afsi Moaveni Thank you VERY much for sharing. And every now and then, you find someone who genuinely wants to share knowledge and educate others. Bravo for that librarian for her unselfish efforts!!
This is one of the coolest vids on you tube for me. I've enjoyed making dams on creeks since childhood and enjoy/ enjoyed busting them. I've busted a lagoon/ estuary wall before at Corindi beach Northern NSW, Australia after heavy rains. The lagoon, estuary was full one time with the tide only starting to come back in. It took me a long time to dig and bust the wall. Though a little rivulet slowly but surely ate its way back up the beach until the potential energy of the lagoon started to do all the work for me. After about 30 mins to an hour familiar horseshoe shaped erosion started eating back into the fine sand of the lagoon until a torrent was unleashed (though the horshoe shape was much more well defined and the water looking like mercury). Large enough for someone in a canoe to travel down.
Short, clear, to the point. Cable TV would take 90 minutes to explain this, including repeating everything that's already been said every time they come back from commercial.
Or having a few of the people involved be the center of attention and then needlessly doing a back story on all of them lol With dramatic zooms and pans around them when they are introduced like they are in a comic book movie.
lol this is why I can't watch the news especially if there is something big going on. Because you watch the same story every time with models for everything.
This is a very clear success. The engineers who planned this breach progression, and the controllers of the dam systems downstream who monitored the situation and handled the huge influx in a timely fashion, earned their pay and then some. This was well done. It's a shame I never heard about it until nearly 40 years later.
They don't make informational videos like this anymore. Everything is all high drama with lots of shots being shown over and over and hysterical people running around yelling. Now, there is 10X more drama if a mechanic on a discovery channel show can't find his wrench.
I didnt realize how much I missed my childhood until I heard his voice, saw the video quality, and just straight to the information. The nostalgia almost hurts, such different times, such a short time
A lot of things are designed to fail. Just like this dam your car has things called fusible links that are designed to fail if they get an electric over load saving the rest of your electrical system....like the "plug" in the dam.
Thanks for posting this ! My dad came and got me out of school that day and we took a sack lunch and watched it happen live. It was quite a flood I remember.
bigrigJim I had just gotten home at lunch time from sierra collage.....saw the very beginning on channel 3 and jumped into the car from home on Racetrack and rushed over too the dam overlook to watch.....was amazing.....and really loud
It's unfortunate that when civil engineers save hundreds of millions of dollars and dozens of lives with fantastic engineering and management like this it's not headline news. Bad news on a tenth of that scale would be the lead story for the best part of a week.
Sancho - As far as getting paid handsomely, do you have any idea what kind of rigorous program they go thru in college to obtain that degree, not too mention the money they paid for tuition and expenses? Also, if that sort of care had been taken in the construction of the Oroville Dam maybe hundreds of thousands of lives would not be at risk today. Agree with BobElHat.
I lived in Granite Bay on Folsom Lake at the time and it was pretty amazing. It sure resulted in some very cautious boating that spring in Folsom Lake because of all the debris.
I was going to UNR during those storms. There wasn't good information interchange in that era, and many incredible stories like this were simply lost to time. Thanks for posting this video.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Actually had a teacher in high school who was a hydraulic engineer who worked on this project. All these years later it's still cool to learn about. We actually did several experiments where we built model dams (out of dirt, stick, what have you) and saw when they would fail.
I have to say, this is one fascinating video. Incredibly educational and professional. I had no idea they make/made dams like this, where the structure erodes and fails in a predicted manner. Beside obvious fail safes and backups, this is just VERY interesting how they predict the erosion.
@bass & pickrel slayer Hello Ali, yes it is. Once the people of Earth get passed greed and arrogance, they will start to really learn about the workings of the universe. Until then, stay safe!
I dunno why videos like this fascinate me and for some reason I watch them late at night. LOL! The power of the water at the diversion tunnel and the sound would be overwhelming.
I’m sure you’re right. Anyone who’s visited Niagara Falls and driven along the Niagara River on the American side, can attest to the eerie power and sound of that much rushing water.
i was born February 19th 1986 at 4:45pm.. its cool to see the things that were going on right as i was coming into the world. Im glad nobody was hurt. I;m glad whoever designed this coffer dam had the smarts to make it do what it did.
These are the kind of videos I like. It prompted me to go read about the proposed Auburn Dam, and why it was never finished. A seismic fault under the dam halted construction work on the project.
This wasn't a failure at all, any more than a blown fuse is a failure. The safety plug did what it was supposed to do - gave its life to protect the coffer dam from catastrophic collapse.
I was living near Auburn at that time and was watching from the Forest Hill bridge. I watched the high water in the canyon up stream at the confluence take whole trees downriver when the coffer dam finally broke.
When I was a kid, whenever it rained, I made all kinds of “cofferdams” out of rocks and dirt - just like the one in the video only smaller. None of them worked either. Sometimes even concrete fails....
I was up on the hill at the Overlook site watching when it broke in 86.......used too fish a lot on the folsom side of the diversion tunnel when I was a kid in 70s and early 80s
They did not plan fo the damn to fail, the high water levels dictated the failure, the engineers designed the failure to be gradual as opposed to a catastrophic failure.
I grew up in Auburn. If you go to the canyon today, you'll see the huge concrete footings for the Auburn Dam in both sides of the canyon. The Auburn-Forresthill bridge was built to go across Lake Auburn, but today it stands high above the river. The bridge was used on the movie XXX when he drives the corvette off the bridge...That's the Auburn-Forresthill bridge. My friends dad operated one of the cranes that built that bridge and when it was completed, we would crawl in the girders and onto the concrete pillars...there was no railing and we stood 450 feet above the river, throwing things off. If you ever look at the bridge, think about crawling out to those pillars...It was a blast at 13 years old! I was gone when this dam collapse happened but remember hearing about it from my Father.
Eventually it was. This took place in Placer County, CA. Big $$$ was spent to remove what was left of the coffer dam, redirect the river back to it's natural path by closing the diversion tunnel, and restore the river bed using lots of concrete and huge boulders to mimic nature. Restoration project was completed somewhere about 2007, if memory serves me correct.
I don't like that how the 2nd dam failure worked as designed. i just want all the dams to completely collapse and then show shots of towns being swept away
I was in my last year at Cal St Sacramento in 1986. The level of water flow was amazing. I feel lucky the levy held. My apartment on 1st floor was next to the levy and I would likely have drowned.
If you know the area below Folsom Dam, there is the town of Folsom and Negro Bar State Park. This park is an excellent place for water sports enthusiast's of all ages. There are huge rock formations out in the river bed. The flood waters from this dam failure were rushing over the rocks and it looked like something out of a Disaster movie. I always felt the Bluffs were a natural barrier should Folsom Dam ever collapse.
Unfortunately, it washed away the Shady Rest hotel , Hooterville, & uncle Joe but Oliver's farming operation quadrupled in size making Lisa happy and everyone in Green Acres .
Fascinating footage, thank you for posting. The power of erosion is enormous and much more than I thought. This along with the Glen Canyon erosion incident for me shows that large canyons probably did form in hundreds of years rather than hundreds of thousands of years like some suspect. Given the waterflow of course....
I am not a dam expert, and you are correct in the cofferdams are designed as temporary solutions, but I believe this was a failure in that the cofferdam was breached before the permanent dam was built. So they built this cofferdam, re-routed the water, and were going to work on the actual dam. But before the actual dam was built, this huge rainfall happened, and the cofferdam failed. Hence the failure. Incidentally, due to environmental and other reasons, the Auburn dam was never actually built.
It was designed to fail at the "safety plug" without that plug the dam could have toppled over anywhere and emptied in much shorter time, flooding much more downstream.
I am not a dam expert either, but it was a controlled failure. It had a dam safety plug so that when the dam water rose to high the dam plug would give and the dam would fail in the direction the dam designers and dam engineers wanted it to. Now stop asking dam questions that with a moment of dam thought you can figure out your dam self.(not trying to be mean just giving you my dam opinion on the dam issue.)
We lived above the American River with a view of Lake Clementine. We fought tooth and nail against this monstrosity and was so happy to see it fail. Just reliving good times here.
7:53 "The erosion of the safety plug was successfully completed." Jokes aside. This was not a failure (as the title claims). It was erosion by design as stated at the very end of the video.
Wow, thank you for posting this! Where did you come across the footage?
+Armchair Engineer Agreed. Very interesting footage.
Short answer: Bureau of Reclamation's library Long answer: Read below
It actually took some work to get the video, but I really wanted to see it, so in this case persistence paid. I had read about the dam breach in the book Nature Noir, and how the breach had been videotaped. The book was required reading for an outdoor recreation and parks management class I took. I highly recommend the book. Anyway, being an engineer (I take these classes just because I like them ), and living in Northern California, I became very curious about the dam. All I could find online was a reference to the National Archives copy of the video, and they are in DC, I am in California, and to get a copy from them would cost a lot of money. It was an archival copy and it would take a lot of work to get me a copy; I would have to go through a third party, lots of paperwork, etc. I called various universities and thought they may have a copy (everyone thought Berkeley would have a copy). None did. In the end, it was the librarian at the Bureau of Reclamation's Sacramento office that found me the video and made me a copy. She was really wonderful. I did have a hard time uploading it and am still not sure if it all got uploaded. Glad others find it interesting too.
+Afsi Moaveni Thank you VERY much for sharing. And every now and then, you find someone who genuinely wants to share knowledge and educate others. Bravo for that librarian for her unselfish efforts!!
+Afsi Moaveni Thank you for your persistence in obtaining this video, I found it very interesting.
This is one of the coolest vids on you tube for me. I've enjoyed making dams on creeks since childhood and enjoy/ enjoyed busting them. I've busted a lagoon/ estuary wall before at Corindi beach Northern NSW, Australia after heavy rains. The lagoon, estuary was full one time with the tide only starting to come back in. It took me a long time to dig and bust the wall. Though a little rivulet slowly but surely ate its way back up the beach until the potential energy of the lagoon started to do all the work for me. After about 30 mins to an hour familiar horseshoe shaped erosion started eating back into the fine sand of the lagoon until a torrent was unleashed (though the horshoe shape was much more well defined and the water looking like mercury). Large enough for someone in a canoe to travel down.
Short, clear, to the point. Cable TV would take 90 minutes to explain this, including repeating everything that's already been said every time they come back from commercial.
Or having a few of the people involved be the center of attention and then needlessly doing a back story on all of them lol With dramatic zooms and pans around them when they are introduced like they are in a comic book movie.
Muddy water=poor land management. There can never be a healthy dam unless the catchment area is healthy.
Cable TV? What's that?
lol this is why I can't watch the news especially if there is something big going on. Because you watch the same story every time with models for everything.
omg yes!!
That old school 80's learning music really churns up some nostalgia
I have no idea why i watched this,i also have no idea why i enjoyed it so much
You enjoyed it because it was really interesting =)
You enjoyed it because it wasn't filled with opinions , finger pointing and drama. it was informative and strait forward, I miss that.
It would have even better with all those #me too. demonstrators and george soros at the base of the spillway when it gave way
filthy animal I was standing up on the hill on the north west and watched it
TH-cam rabbit holes and here we all are watching without question until the end...
This is a very clear success. The engineers who planned this breach progression, and the controllers of the dam systems downstream who monitored the situation and handled the huge influx in a timely fashion, earned their pay and then some. This was well done.
It's a shame I never heard about it until nearly 40 years later.
Here it is 2019 and I'm just hearing about it.
and for the 2nd time Folsom Dam saved Sacramento first time was in 1955
As far as dam failures go, I'd say you could call it a success, just like the government did here. I suppose Trump is indeed like Reagan.
@@hilham89 anyone who lived in the area knew about this, it was a fairly big news day
Dare I say, It's a dam great success?
This is kind of info doco that I used to see at school. To the point, yet and clear and concise and something a kid could learn from.
That was so cool. Hats off to the engineers and those who fulfilled the expectations of the engineering design.
They don't make informational videos like this anymore. Everything is all high drama with lots of shots being shown over and over and hysterical people running around yelling. Now, there is 10X more drama if a mechanic on a discovery channel show can't find his wrench.
and real footage is the best no matter how old it is
Clearanceman2 word.
This is so true
So so true. I’m over all this drama crap. History channel is the worst imo
I agree. This has a more "informational" feel to it.
I didnt realize how much I missed my childhood until I heard his voice, saw the video quality, and just straight to the information. The nostalgia almost hurts, such different times, such a short time
You looking damn good
How are you doing now Veghead Cat? You look like a blast in your profile pic.
“Designed to fail.” Gotta use that line next time I mess something up. Thanks for sharing.
I just blame it on the guy who was there before me. Either him, or the retired electrician.
That's gold bro LOL
A lot of things are designed to fail. Just like this dam your car has things called fusible links that are designed to fail if they get an electric over load saving the rest of your electrical system....like the "plug" in the dam.
I, myself, am designed to fail, I guess.
@@karpabla Ya but you want to out live your expected life span like the B-52 or the A-10 if possible. 😊
It failed by design, in a controlled way - Excellent engineering work!
Designed to fail
@@Badhands55> failed to design
Thanks for posting this ! My dad came and got me out of school that day and we took a sack lunch and watched it happen live. It was quite a flood I remember.
bigrigJim I had just gotten home at lunch time from sierra collage.....saw the very beginning on channel 3 and jumped into the car from home on Racetrack and rushed over too the dam overlook to watch.....was amazing.....and really loud
What a cool dad.
@scott matthew tea bagging I think.
@scott matthew A lunch you pack in a brown paper bag.
"Task Failed Successfully"
It's unfortunate that when civil engineers save hundreds of millions of dollars and dozens of lives with fantastic engineering and management like this it's not headline news. Bad news on a tenth of that scale would be the lead story for the best part of a week.
BobElHat whatever, it's their job. They don't need special recognition for doing their dam jobs. Plus, they get paid pretty handsomely.
Liked for the pun
Sancho - As far as getting paid handsomely, do you have any idea what kind of rigorous program they go thru in college to obtain that degree, not too mention the money they paid for tuition and expenses? Also, if that sort of care had been taken in the construction of the Oroville Dam maybe hundreds of thousands of lives would not be at risk today. Agree with BobElHat.
Only the most dimwitted of persons would think that the media shouild run stories about all of the things that did not happen today.
"Hundreds of lives continue on as absolutely nothing in particular happens to them" doesn't make for a very good headline.
Excellent narration without the usual acid head music to ruin it.
joeylawn36111 when ?
Rumor has it, they're still halfway through their set.
They should say. Auburn cofferdam. Another 160 times though
Rumor has it the bags that the swiggity swooty guy threw up came back down and caused the dam to give.
That is probably on the rubbish music for engineering videos record. It could be purchased with annoying music to play in elevators as a box set
Wow, I saw this tape after a Folsom Dam tour in 1988, and I've always longed to share it with others. Great work getting it online!
Absolutely fascinating. I love it when I fall into an educational rabbit hole.
if you reading this the world is on lockdown and we are trying hard to find good videos like this 10 stars to the narrator
Yes...in the same league as those 50's and 60's machine shop tutorial films...clear. ...concise...well explained ...
I lived in Granite Bay on Folsom Lake at the time and it was pretty amazing. It sure resulted in some very cautious boating that spring in Folsom Lake because of all the debris.
I was going to UNR during those storms. There wasn't good information interchange in that era, and many incredible stories like this were simply lost to time. Thanks for posting this video.
Engineer 1: Sir we have a problem.
Engineer 2: Damn!
Engineer 1: Yes sir. How did you know?
So thats what its like when no one screws up and tries to hide it.
This was excellently produced and highly informative!
I lived down stream from that in rancho Cordova, not far from the American river. I remember the flood, it was so cool.
Thanks for this post!
LOVE the French horns in the overture!
Not a failure, worked as designed. Title should read breach
There are not many videos worth watching from start to finish. This was a really eye opening look at a damn well planned dam failure.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
Not strictly a catastrophic failure. I'm surprised the move mentioned the word (at the end). It was an engineered controlled breach. They could call it a fail-safe.
09:06 Good to know that the structure itself was built to minimize damage in the event of a catastrophic failure.
Direct and to the point. No music. I used to watch National Geographic for things like this..now there's anything BUT educational content.
Actually had a teacher in high school who was a hydraulic engineer who worked on this project. All these years later it's still cool to learn about. We actually did several experiments where we built model dams (out of dirt, stick, what have you) and saw when they would fail.
That's neat. Did your teacher also include steelhead throwing themselves at the dam so they wouldn't fail?
I have to say, this is one fascinating video. Incredibly educational and professional.
I had no idea they make/made dams like this, where the structure erodes and fails in a predicted manner.
Beside obvious fail safes and backups, this is just VERY interesting how they predict the erosion.
@bass & pickrel slayer Hello Ali, yes it is. Once the people of Earth get passed greed and arrogance, they will start to really learn about the workings of the universe. Until then, stay safe!
I dunno why videos like this fascinate me and for some reason I watch them late at night. LOL! The power of the water at the diversion tunnel and the sound would be overwhelming.
I’m sure you’re right. Anyone who’s visited Niagara Falls and driven along the Niagara River on the American side, can attest to the eerie power and sound of that much rushing water.
@@chasbodaniels1744 That's why I'm glad there's videos out there like these because I get to see places I'll probably never get to visit in my life.
i was born February 19th 1986 at 4:45pm.. its cool to see the things that were going on right as i was coming into the world. Im glad nobody was hurt. I;m glad whoever designed this coffer dam had the smarts to make it do what it did.
13 people died...
Excellent engineering. And hats off to the government for funding the needed safety plug!!!
Californians are proud of their 'plugs'! hehe
Oh god a film they show you in school.
So this happened a year after I was born. Interesting TH-cam. Thanks on making me feel old :(
A dramatic failure that was a complete success! Great video.
The Three Gorges Dam brought me to this. Thanks for this upload!
Good engineering saved lives by having a controlled failure of that plug.
I was living just below this dam and going to school in Auburn in 1986. This was quite a storm indeed.
Thank you for such a great video and also to the good people who built a damn that had a amazing safety feature.
Bravo to those engineers. Didn’t know you could mitigate something like that. Clever way to approach that problem.
Voice from old days time gone so fast my mother now is old my step father died 💔 god bless him I remember this 💔😢
This is really a good piece of engineering design and built by some very outstanding engineers.
Thanx for the share. One can never know too much.
Great video. Very well explained. Thank you
These are the kind of videos I like. It prompted me to go read about the proposed Auburn Dam, and why it was never finished. A seismic fault under the dam halted construction work on the project.
A seismic fault. In California. Go figure. Lots of money wasted.
@@QuantumRift they believed there were no faults along the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They found one right under the dam site.
@@paulriddle7818 Yea...isn't California "riddled" with seismic faults? LOL...
@@QuantumRift that's just terrible man...... 🤣😝
@@paulriddle7818 I try. 🤣😝
This wasn't a failure at all, any more than a blown fuse is a failure. The safety plug did what it was supposed to do - gave its life to protect the coffer dam from catastrophic collapse.
Made in 1986 and still looks beautiful. That narrators voice is classic!!
I was living near Auburn at that time and was watching from the Forest Hill bridge. I watched the high water in the canyon up stream at the confluence take whole trees downriver when the coffer dam finally broke.
These kind of films take me back to high school. I've never slept as good as when one of these films would play in class.
What?...you went to sleep in class instead of checking out all those babes? Make friends and a network.
Well that's some good engineering
Amazing how different Folsom Dam looks now. I never knew you could drive a cross it.
Well done to the engineers and management team of this dam system!
When I was a kid, whenever it rained, I made all kinds of “cofferdams” out of rocks and dirt - just like the one in the video only smaller. None of them worked either. Sometimes even concrete fails....
This style takes me back to childhood. I love it
Thanks for a fascinating video!
I was up on the hill at the Overlook site watching when it broke in 86.......used too fish a lot on the folsom side of the diversion tunnel when I was a kid in 70s and early 80s
If you planned to make it fail and it successfully "failed" isn't it actually a success?
They did not plan fo the damn to fail, the high water levels dictated the failure, the engineers designed the failure to be gradual as opposed to a catastrophic failure.
To quote the Addams family - "You failed failing?"
Now that's some serious brain twisting shit you said right there!!
Good point.
I grew up in Auburn. If you go to the canyon today, you'll see the huge concrete footings for the Auburn Dam in both sides of the canyon. The Auburn-Forresthill bridge was built to go across Lake Auburn, but today it stands high above the river. The bridge was used on the movie XXX when he drives the corvette off the bridge...That's the Auburn-Forresthill bridge.
My friends dad operated one of the cranes that built that bridge and when it was completed, we would crawl in the girders and onto the concrete pillars...there was no railing and we stood 450 feet above the river, throwing things off. If you ever look at the bridge, think about crawling out to those pillars...It was a blast at 13 years old! I was gone when this dam collapse happened but remember hearing about it from my Father.
Great engineering.
Really good video and it's amazing the power of water
This was very interesting. Thank you. Smiles
Had no idea any of this had happened while living in the Bay Area. But I certainly remember all that rain in 86 as well as around 81.
Why was the cofferdam not dismantled when it was decided not to build the permanent dam?
Eventually it was. This took place in Placer County, CA. Big $$$ was spent to remove what was left of the coffer dam, redirect the river back to it's natural path by closing the diversion tunnel, and restore the river bed using lots of concrete and huge boulders to mimic nature. Restoration project was completed somewhere about 2007, if memory serves me correct.
This was mother nature's way of saying "no stupid humans... no more dams... youll thank me later"
The gold uncovered from this must have been amazing when found!
Brilliant work of engineering....good job!
I don't like that how the 2nd dam failure worked as designed. i just want all the dams to completely collapse and then show shots of towns being swept away
I love how funny I am
I was in my last year at Cal St Sacramento in 1986. The level of water flow was amazing. I feel lucky the levy held. My apartment on 1st floor was next to the levy and I would likely have drowned.
If you know the area below Folsom Dam, there is the town of Folsom and Negro Bar State Park. This park is an excellent place for water sports enthusiast's of all ages. There are huge rock formations out in the river bed. The flood waters from this dam failure were rushing over the rocks and it looked like something out of a Disaster movie. I always felt the Bluffs were a natural barrier should Folsom Dam ever collapse.
Unfortunately, it washed away the Shady Rest hotel , Hooterville, & uncle Joe but Oliver's farming operation quadrupled in size making Lisa happy and everyone in Green Acres .
Fascinating footage, thank you for posting. The power of erosion is enormous and much more than I thought. This along with the Glen Canyon erosion incident for me shows that large canyons probably did form in hundreds of years rather than hundreds of thousands of years like some suspect. Given the waterflow of course....
Hahaha... you're funny 😂
Large canyons can for in days, example Mt. Saint Helen.
Hats off to the folks that designed and constructed that dam.
By the way, loved the video, hope you post more of these.
Great video. Thank you.
When this started, I was thinking the music choice a bit chipper for the subject matter, as I assumed it was a disaster, but it was a triumph.
That rainbow distortion in the video oh how it brings back memories good ol VHS
How did they put that huge amount of soil in there without getting eroded in the first place during construction?
They're going to have to redo this so it can be filmed in 4K.
This was recommended to me I watched it cause quarantine got my mind floating like a boat
I forget. Is this auburn cofferdam
Thank you. did they ever fix the cofferdam again or is it just permanently broken now
KaTrina Marie they removed the rest of it because the construction of the Auburn dam was stopped.
Wow, cheers mate, this vid was very interesting, cool design
Thank you for this!
Fascinating. Thank you.
I wish the video was better quality and also wish the speaker was different, because I feel old now, thank you very much.
+J Brabec I found it comforting without so much drama and yelling like every show has now.
Well done on the design!
It's amazing how much energy is stored in a reservoir
The dam lived up to its design 😀
But faillure? It seems it does where it is designed for.
I am not a dam expert, and you are correct in the cofferdams are designed as temporary solutions, but I believe this was a failure in that the cofferdam was breached before the permanent dam was built. So they built this cofferdam, re-routed the water, and were going to work on the actual dam. But before the actual dam was built, this huge rainfall happened, and the cofferdam failed. Hence the failure. Incidentally, due to environmental and other reasons, the Auburn dam was never actually built.
You're wrong, the narrator states that the failure by design went according to plan around 9:11
It was designed to fail at the "safety plug" without that plug the dam could have toppled over anywhere and emptied in much shorter time, flooding much more downstream.
I am not a dam expert either, but it was a controlled failure. It had a dam safety plug so that when the dam water rose to high the dam plug would give and the dam would fail in the direction the dam designers and dam engineers wanted it to. Now stop asking dam questions that with a moment of dam thought you can figure out your dam self.(not trying to be mean just giving you my dam opinion on the dam issue.)
Dam right!
now look at our dams today...virtually empty....what we would give for water like that right now
We lived above the American River with a view of Lake Clementine. We fought tooth and nail against this monstrosity and was so happy to see it fail. Just reliving good times here.
1986, I was only 6 years old and living in Stockton, CA at the time... I bet fishing was great that year of 86'... =D
Very nice video!
They left space... unlike Oroville.
7:53 "The erosion of the safety plug was successfully completed."
Jokes aside. This was not a failure (as the title claims). It was erosion by design as stated at the very end of the video.
Very significant soundtrack at the title and end! :-)
Where can you find this type of videos!?, I mean they explained really good, without the drama.
Wow! I never heard about this one!