Dozers lost in dam break

In the book Cadillac Desert there's a personal account from one of the dozer operators - as I remember, he was a Mormon, and was pretty much prepared to meet his Maker before he got out of there. ..
They sent the dozers down there to try and plug the leak, but it was already too late.

I would have never attempted to even get them tractors near there!!!!!!!! There was no way they could have stopped that leak.
Gary

Hi, ROME/KG.
Interesting photo. Thanks for sharing. I'm with you. There was no way they were ever going to be able to plug that leak with just two dozers and especially not from the outside. Once the water found its way through and the leak started, the pressure behind it would have been enormous.

Just my 0.02.

A few years ago near Geelong a dam was leaking and they sent some divers in with big plastic sheets to lay over the leak to stop it or some such plan anyway the divers never came back people have no idea just how much power is behind water

Paul

The Teton affair was pretty much a case study in how & where NOT to build a dam.
Killed 11 people & 13,000 head of cows...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teton_Dam

And one Cat!

we had a much smaller dam failure here in Tasmania a few years back. At least in this case the owner/farmer realised that once it started to leak from the base and mid-way up the face he did not try to plug it.

Instead he marched in with a couple of excavators and dug out the overflow. Meanwhile the local police and emergency people went down-stream to evacuate residents.

At least by digging out the overflow the water discharge was able to be controlled to some degree and the pressure on the dam face was relieved as quickly as possible. Fortunately the strategy worked out okay and no people, houses, cows or machinery was lost.

And one Cat!

Collateral damage...we're pooched anyway, throw a couple dozers in to make it look like we tried...