Case Studies

Beginning at about 1:15 pm on September 22, 1938, the upstream slope of the dam adjacent to the right abutment experienced a large failure as the construction work had progressed to within 20 feet of the final dam crest elevation. One hundred eighty men were working in the area.

The September 2013 rainfall that occurred on the Front Range of Colorado was the result of an unusual, late season storm event where warm moisture and upslope winds allowed this regional storm to dump up to 17 inches of rain over a seven day period.

On March 11, 2011, a massive 500-600 km rupture off the east coast of Japan resulted in a powerful Magnitude 9.1 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. The shaking also damaged at least 745 dams in Fukushima Prefecture and caused a rare seismically induced failure of Fujinuma Dam.

The United States Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) began construction of Glen Canyon Dam in 1956 as a part of the Colorado River Storage Project to provide water storage, flood control, and hydropower to Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico.

Guajataca Dam is a 121 ft high, 1,037 ft long, high hazard potential earthen embankment structure constructed using semi-hydraulic fill methods for the central core (i.e., “puddle” core) and rolled and compacted outer shells composed of a mixture of clayey soils, gravel, and cobbles.

Construction of the Harmony Gold Mine No. 4 tailings dam began in 1978 and was sited 300 m (1,000 feet) away from the suburban town of Merriespruit in South Africa.

Hawkins Dam impounded the most downstream reservoir in the Wenner Lakes chain of manmade lakes located 6 miles Southeast of Twisp WA in Okanogan County. Hawkins Dam Impounded Wenner Lake No. 1. Hawkins Dam is a 35-foot high earthfill dam with a crest length of 350 feet and impounds a 4-acre reservoir with a volume of 22 acre-feet...

Just before midnight on August 17th 1959 in southwest Montana, in the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park, a Mw 7.3 earthquake caused an estimated 36 to 43 million cubic yard rockslide to rapidly cross the Madison River and continue up the opposite canyon...