A file photo of an ISIS militant in front of the Mosul Dam. The group no longer has control of the dam.
Keith Johnson and C.K. Hickey, Foreign Policy: Mapped: The Crumbling Iraqi Dam That May Flood The Country
If the Mosul Dam goes, a lake of water will submerge cities from Mosul to Baghdad and kill hundreds of thousands. This map shows the potential devastation.
The Iraqi government and an Italian engineering firm have finally reached a tentative agreement that could provide a long-term fix for the world’s most dangerous dam. But the tricky repairs needed to prevent a catastrophic failure at the Mosul Dam, in northern Iraq, could potentially make a bad situation even worse.
Mosul Dam, built in the early 1980s, has for decades been considered a ticking time bomb. Constructed on top of gypsum, limestone, and other minerals that dissolve when in contact with water, the dam has been plagued by the threat of collapse since even before it began operations. Six days a week for 30 years, engineers have pumped thousands of tons of grout under the dam to shore it up and prevent a catastrophic breach. U.S. Army Engineers famously called it “the most dangerous dam in the world.”
Late last week, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. general in Iraq, warned that the dam is again in danger of collapsing, which would hurl a lake full of water down the Tigris River, flooding cities from Mosul to Baghdad and possibly killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: I once saw the aftermath of a small dam collapse .... the destruction was incredible. But what I saw is insignificant in caparison to what would happen if the Mosul Dam should collapse. People will have time to flee, but the destruction will be widespread and absolute.
2 comments:
wiki:
Operation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently publicised as the "Dam Busters",[1] using a specially developed "bouncing bomb" invented and developed by Sir Barnes Wallis. The Möhne and Edersee Dams were breached, causing catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr valley and of villages in the Eder valley; the Sorpe dam sustained only minor damage. Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more were damaged. Factories and mines were also either damaged or destroyed. An estimated 1,600 civilians drowned: about 600 Germans and 1,000 mainly Soviet forced-labourers.
The "Dam Busters," proud of their moniker, are scheduled to get the F-35.
Bye bye Green zone
Post a Comment