Fancy another Dam Disaster? kzread.info/dash/bejne/opqTpdtsgZfepto.html

@CassassinCatto

3 жыл бұрын

I'd love an Ace Hopewell t-shirt

@TheEDFLegacy

3 жыл бұрын

Damit. 😅

@crabman5201

3 жыл бұрын

You should do a video about the Austin dam in Pennsylvania

@DrawdeThePotato

3 жыл бұрын

Can you stop doing those sudden stop in speach.... It almost give me flashback when my smartphone screen die ☹️

@thafff

3 жыл бұрын

Speaking of significant dam failures, the Malpasset (France) dam disaster is worth to be given a look to.

The fact that Mulholland took full responsibility and retired is just so foreign in this era. He deserves some respect for that.

@kevinajjenkins

3 жыл бұрын

I had the same exact thought.

@methanbreather

3 жыл бұрын

the fact that noone was punished for killing 400+ people out of greed an negligience put up a fine example for today.

@wettale

3 жыл бұрын

@@methanbreather if you didn’t say it I was gonna. Sure saying it’s your fault is fine, but there justice for the victims

@kevinajjenkins

3 жыл бұрын

Mulholland didn't create this dam to kill people. It is true that his team made mistakes but doesn't make him evil or money hungry. The video even explained that he had completed many other successful water infrastructure projects.

@Narokkurai

3 жыл бұрын

Construction just doesn't work the same way anymore though. There is no one person who takes responsibility, because projects are not the product of just one person anymore. In fact significant effort has been put into preventing a single person from having the kind of oversight and micromanaging capability as Mulholland had. The modern system is not without its faults, but it does mitigate to some extent the problems exemplified by this story. "Superstar" engineers can oversee the construction of incredible structures, but when they become distracted, overworked, or just plain stuck on a bad idea, the consequences can be devastating.

self taught chief engineer. Those are words you won't find in todays world

@timwilliamanderson

3 жыл бұрын

You’d think but we take mechanics that show significant prowess and allow them to become “engineering techs” and their job is identical with the engineers with degrees

@suspicioustumbleweed4760

3 жыл бұрын

@@timwilliamanderson woah dang I hope they get it right sir.

@timwilliamanderson

3 жыл бұрын

@@suspicioustumbleweed4760 an engineer where I work has to go through a 2+ year long period where they solve the problem and then it all must get second checked until they take a test and pass then they can be the only ones who sign off on some thing. Unless it’s critical or a redesign in which case it needs two or three signatures each of which has their own double check.

@johansoderberg9579

3 жыл бұрын

Chief engineer... In USA, you did not hesitate to vote a self taught idiot to PresidenT! And lots of people believe him to win the second election... :-)

@agenericaccount3935

3 жыл бұрын

@@johansoderberg9579 Calm down, go feed Merkel's guests

how often do we hear about the people taking full responsibility? mulhulland may have made mistakes that caused this, but at least he owned up to them. i'll give him credit for that.

@th3d3wd3r

3 жыл бұрын

I was going to say the same thing

@archstanton_live

3 жыл бұрын

or even any responsibility?

@JoshuaTootell

3 жыл бұрын

Today? Virtually never. Look at the people who are responsible for the lead leaching in Detroit.

@ryanmooney5758

3 жыл бұрын

It's a sad story; he was actually deeply emotionally affected by the failure of the dam. Reminds me a lot of the designer (mentioned in a recent video on this channel, in fact) of the suspended walkways in the Hyatt Hotel collapse, who lectured for years afterward to warn of his firm's mistakes.

@carlrossi7989

3 жыл бұрын

From the Inquest: "A sorrowful Mulholland told the Coroner’s Inquest that he “only envied those who were killed” • He went on to say “Don’t blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human.”

I am a retired engineer, not self taught, but professionally qualified, and worked on some very hazardous chemical installations. My worst nightmare was that something that I designed could cause a single death, nevermind hundreds. I managed 30 years with only minor accidents of slips trips and falls, for that I am extremely thankful.

@vexile1239

3 жыл бұрын

This might be bit too little but thank you for the hard work you have put in

@jamesdiciano5319

2 жыл бұрын

Ya seriously thanks mate

@eliotguerin192

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for your recollection. I am a young engineer and will be getting my PE later this year. My worst fear is for my own design to harm anyone. Our current system of checks & balances on engineering design is built on a foundation of catastrophic failures, and we must be determined to not repeat history.

@ronaldsolberg6231

Жыл бұрын

I was a roofing contractor for over 30 years. I done everything from hot tar almost every other type of roofing they had up to 2006. Most the time I ran about 6 men if busy during a hail storm then maybe 20 to catch up. In the whole time I had 2 men go to the hospital. Both were over drugs they got at lunch time. But even so very minor injuries. Just a er visit and released. Really it is a very good record for this type of work. Nothing like your danger point.

@aarontonthat1690

Жыл бұрын

Where were you at in 1920? 😩 lol jk. Times were just different back then. OSHA prolly became a thing because this disaster. Lol

I used to live in a mountain valley in California that had lots of streams and water until the kind folk in LA voted to have it diverted to them. Now that valley is a dried up crust.

@AlexPope

3 жыл бұрын

Down side to majority rule. The big cities get what they want at the cost of rural communities

@TheAtomicSpoon

3 жыл бұрын

@@AlexPope Then at the slightest problem they up and leave and do it somewhere new.

@leftnoname

3 жыл бұрын

“The kind folk in LA”...Just LOL at that :-)

@biohazardlnfS

3 жыл бұрын

Meh how the world works. Need to support a larger population who everbis in a smaller one just gonna have to deal with it. The lives of millions of course would weigh more than the lives of a few thousand in a small Townsend. Not to mention LA would also produce more tax money as well. Happens everywhere in the world. I can't say its right but I also can't say outright its wrong.

@Kabodanki

3 жыл бұрын

the one party state

This disaster leveled my hometown of Fillmore. It wiped everything along the Santa Clara River Valley and took out the only bridge connecting Fillmore to Bardsdale, Moorpark for years. Bardsdale was (and still is) like a cluster of ranches, churches and homes, whereas Fillmore was an actual town with an active railroad. Without access to Fillmore, Bardsdale was going to have a hard time getting ordinary goods. So a suspendible foot bridge with a zipline was set up for folks to come and go across each side of the riverbed until a new bridge could be fully erected years later.

@ericnelson4540

3 жыл бұрын

I'm in Bardsdale right now. It's amazing how little rise there is from the ranch down to the Santa Clara River. Hard to imagine the wall of water coming through. Was driving through Santa Paula the other day and my grandfather was pointing the height of the high water mark just below the second floor windows at the Isbell Middle School a quarter mile from the Santa Clara River.

@csteegs8681

3 жыл бұрын

Cool comment

@DeafPunk

3 жыл бұрын

@@sh-zs4oy hehe, unfortunately no there isn't one anymore. The zip line along with a suspendible foot bridge they used in the meantime stayed for years until a considerable replacent (y'know... a real bridge lol) was put in place. Today there is an actual concrete overpass

@frostedlambs

3 жыл бұрын

I wish I lived in america not shitty england

@ay-leck1369

3 жыл бұрын

You make it sound like you witnessed the event or were directly affected by it. I got confused for a sec because I was like “wait a minute this dude can’t be over 120 years old” 😂

I heard (from Caitlin Doughty's video) that the "tombstone" was destroyed after a teenager fell off it while doing teenager things and died. Kinda cursed.

@theFLCLguy

3 жыл бұрын

Dude, I just watched that video yesterday. I saw this video and was like "i know you."

@carlrossi7989

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, there were two teens climbing on the Tombstone and one threw a rattlesnake at the other one-I'm not making this up....

@pikmaniac2643

3 жыл бұрын

@@carlrossi7989 just 'murica things

@Rx7man

3 жыл бұрын

That's a darwin award winner

@FancyDefect

3 жыл бұрын

I don't know if its irony or not but it all started with money doing money things and people thinking they're smarter than they actually are.

The Teton dam failure in Idaho is another good one. Surveyors said "not a good spot for a dam. Government: build it anyway!

@765kvline

3 жыл бұрын

The USBR hasn't built a major dam since 1976.

@samwise1790

3 жыл бұрын

Actually it was basically the geologists that warned about the site issues, but they were ignored as were the issues encountered during the remediation efforts for the geological material in the abutment. The essentially problem was that the rock, which is multiple units of the huckleberry ridge ash flow tuff (from Yellowstone), is very porous, and without anything done, would allow water to flow through it and lead to piping, undermining the earthen dam. The proposed solution was to pump grout into the abutments to seal the pores. However, after several times the amount of grout was pumped into the rock that was estimated was required for this task, and despite the fact that the rock was still freely accepting more grout (indicating large volumes of pore space still existed), they stopped grouting and filled the dam. Predictably, the water quickly found pathways under and around the dam, through the rock, and began runaway piping and removal of earthen dam material leading to failure. The center of the earthen dam still remains, you can see the layered construction of it, and I believe it was determined that no fault in construction of the earthen portion was made, it simply had no chance to begin with. Ive been there as a geologist to study the huckleberry ridge tuffs unrelated to the dam collapse, and even climbed down the abutments to get samples (they're so fresh, thanks US bureau of reclamation!) and saw the grout/cement pumping holes used during construction.

@donmclean1220

2 жыл бұрын

@@samwise1790 thanks for the explanation. Anyone who needs a more complete description should read “Cadillac desert”.

@nicholasbrown5013

2 жыл бұрын

@@samwise1790 really the usbr just wanted to make sure you had fresh samples. Glass is half full! :)

@samwise1790

2 жыл бұрын

@@nicholasbrown5013 departments of transportation in any state are a geologists best friend, highway roadcuts are a fantastic tool!

The history of Mulholland's aqueduct is sordid in itself. The mentioned "disgruntled" locals basically had their land stolen and seized or otherwise cheated from them for it. It plays neatly into the current history of the region where the coast and the inland portions of the state have a serious political divide, especially over water, to this day.

@davybear4116

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I live in the interior of California and everyday I hope and pray that all the costal cities fall into the pacific and that Sacramento turns back into the swamp it was.

@T_Mo271

3 жыл бұрын

The movie "Chinatown" covers this topic fairly well.

@chazzcoolidge2654

3 жыл бұрын

And North California has to give up water to these SoCal dipshits who decided to live in a desert. We here in the North have a smaller population so politically,we're screwed by LA.

@Davivd2

3 жыл бұрын

The politics of California's water supply have always been crooked. Now the lake where the water started from is a dry bed and LA County has to spend millions to put sprinklers over the dry bed to keep the dust (Which was making locals sick) from polluting the air.

@chazzcoolidge2654

3 жыл бұрын

@@Davivd2 Agreed,those rich fuckers in LA are now ruining North Cali (and a bit of South Oregon) by making a portion of it into the Cascade Monument just so some hikers can go on the Pacific Crest trail once a year and act like they're "mountain men" all while screwing us locals hard and indirectly causing more fires. I hope part of LA gets caught in a huge wildfire.

The picture of the dam afterwards is insane, the massive scale reduced to a tooth of concrete completely bypassed.

@DocNo27

3 жыл бұрын

Water is an amazingly destructive force if left unchecked. Anyone who doesn't think so should go visit the grand canyon - it's pretty breathtaking what any flow of water over time can do!

@bryandavis9923

3 жыл бұрын

@@DocNo27 I actually live about a 10 min drive away from the disaster site and after they destroyed all the bits that where left, it turned into a pretty cool ruins with a dope stream cutting through

The tombstone is honestly one of the most chilling things I've ever seen. It's so massive.

@765kvline

3 жыл бұрын

The L. A. Bureau of Power & Light (I believe they changed their name in April 1940?) to Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, dug a big "grave" downstream and then dynamited the "tombstone." Lots of people went out to see this. The hulking remains of the dam brought lots of sightseers to the disaster site. Not only was the death of a teenager (who had a snake thrown at him by his friend and scared him to fall off the structure) a reason for ditching the tombstone but it was a constant reminder in a very bad public relations way, of the DWP's policy failure.

As a former resident (1960!) of LA, I lived downstream of another dam disaster, the collapse of the Baldwin dam in 1964. This was an interesting disaster caused by a geologic fault, subsidence by the extraction of oil, and a very dubious method of sealing the floor of the reservoir with asphalt. While the total destruction was less than St Francis, a business district and quite a number of homes were washed away. Great video!

@T_Mo271

3 жыл бұрын

When the Baldin Hills dam collapsed, I was amazed that you could have a dam break and a flood right in the middle of the big city.

@kuhltwo1

2 жыл бұрын

I lived in Hawthorne when Baldwin Hills dam went. Watched it on the news.

@FeechLaMannas

2 жыл бұрын

This channel covered the Baldwin hills dam flood! I grew up outside of LA and can’t imagine a catastrophic failure on this scale, wiping out dense neighborhoods…

@ronkemperful

2 жыл бұрын

@@FeechLaMannas Yes, it did so very well.

Good morning from morning land! Look up the Johnstown Flood. A dam broke because idiots were idiots and people died. I grew up about 25 miles from the site and we learned about it in school... Apparently it was one of the worst disasters involving human error and dams. But this one in the video DEFINITELY seems way worse... Eitherway, Johnstown Flood would make for a great video

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the suggestion

@thomaskositzki9424

3 жыл бұрын

@@BrainScramblies Oh man, seriously? :P :D

@Gitbizy

3 жыл бұрын

Way worse in terms of lives lost... I live near the Johnstown area and the flood museum is an amazing place to visit. Just like the st Francis dam you can visualize where the lake was and the massive scale of the failure

@superme63

3 жыл бұрын

@@PlainlyDifficult may we please get playlists based on the patented Plainly Difficult Disaster Scale?

@jasonhaynes2952

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, this killed over 2,000 people and the cause was just plain negligence by a hunting and fishing club for millionaires (basically a modern day country club for the extremely wealthy). They ignored warning signs, altered the dam cheaply to save money when trouble started showing, and this one should be a 9 or 10 on the patented Plainly Difficult disaster scale.

"During the inquest he (Mulholland) accepted all responsibility..." A man of honor, unlike some we have known lately.

@OnlyTakk

3 жыл бұрын

I mean, it was admirable in this situation, but go read about him. Mulholland was a sophisticated politician and essentially destroyed the Owens Valley economy over water rights. A complicated figure at best.

@thetezz0001

3 жыл бұрын

Yes very admirable

@archstanton_live

3 жыл бұрын

@@OnlyTakk I know well if him. He was despicable in many ways. Anyone driving down 395 can tour the area he exploited. Without him LA as we know it might not exist. None the less, the buck stopped with him. That makes him honorable in my book even if his values were different than mine. That is why T**** can never be considered as having been honorable.

@OnlyTakk

3 жыл бұрын

@@archstanton_live What I find impressive in him was his ability, as a self-taught, self-made man to do all of these things-impressive, great, and terrible all mixed.

@archstanton_live

3 жыл бұрын

@@OnlyTakk That also.

Im so early, the flood wave haven't even swept away my house yet. Also, theres so many dams out there just waiting to become a plainly difficult video

I think this disaster is referenced in the film "Chinatown" with Jack Nicholson, when the engineer at the town hearing refuses to build another dangerous dam near the beginning of the film. It's a great crime noir story takes place with the backdrop of LA's shady water rights history, which involved screwing a lot of farmers and landowners out of their property,

@DocNo27

3 жыл бұрын

If you want a real look at the drama of the water wars in the west check out "Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water" - I think it's a little too biased against the US Bureau of Reclamation, but it's still a thorough and fascinating look at the politics and money of water in the southwest. Decisions made and policies set in the 20's and 30's due to people like Mulholland are still causing fallout today (and perpetuating stupid shit like growing Almonds in the desert - talk about wasting water!).

@OLD_CROW

3 жыл бұрын

@@DocNo27 I was actually munching on some California Almonds when I read your comment. Now I feel guilty.

@OLD_CROW

3 жыл бұрын

@Joe Milosch 8 Gallons? (Looks at can.) Jesus!

@georgethompson1460

3 жыл бұрын

@@OLD_CROW It's because a bunch of rich people live there, when they all move to texas you'll likely see the death of those industries.

@dwp1970

3 жыл бұрын

@@DocNo27 Cadillac Desert is a good watch (can be found on KZread) and I agree with your take on the biased view. On the almond side, much of the Owens valley was self-sufficient farming land until LA diverted the water from the region thus some of the farmers moved to where the water ended up.

The absolutely most shocking discovery of this video is that you CAN have a man-made disaster without a man in a white lab coat holding a clipboard.

@davemakesnoises

3 жыл бұрын

Its the suits you have to look out for

@pizzlerot2730

Жыл бұрын

As a man in a white lab coat holding a clipboard, I support this takeaway. We just run the numbers and speak the facts - it's not our fault if the idiots in the C-suite choose to ignore our advice and think that the laws of physics care about their wanting to save money!

"self-taught engineer" - Red flag!! I am an engineer myself and I've met some really good people already who are mostly self-taught. Physicists as software engineers for example. However, despite their superior experience compared to my (back then) Junior engineer experience, I noticed every once in a while that these people are lacking some theoretical background. I really loved working with these guys, because I could learn from their experience. However, the sometimes missing theoretical background stays - and that's something that might be acceptable for a software engineer, but not so much for a civil engineer... And improvising on a dam project also is the next big red flag...

@TheMichigami

3 жыл бұрын

my grandfather was a coal miner who decided to become a self-taught electrician and carpenter, we've had trained electricians and construction people come into the house and have to step outside for a few minutes to recompose themselves at the eldrich horror of somehow functional how-the-hell-is-this-house-still-standing-and-not-on-fire level techniques he used to piece things back together on his own. sometimes self taught is a good thing i've worked with a lot of excellent self-taught artisans and craftspeople at the gallery and shows over the years, but sometimes that missing professional knowledge of things like WHY aluminum wire should not be patched directly into ancient knob-and-tube wiring and be held together with electrical tape and prayers can be kinda important in the big stuff. self-taught piano player, sure why not. self-taught dam engineer, noooope!

@jamesrindley6215

3 жыл бұрын

Like everything, it depends. I'm an engineer of 30 years experience and honestly the most competent engineer I ever worked with was self taught, but he is no ordinary man, being also an accomplished writer and entrepreneur, and an expert in the arts as well as the sciences. On the other end of the scale, you won't have to go far to find qualified yet incompetent people. The real problem is that there were no checks and limits in place to verify that this design was good. No single person's incompetence should ever be able to initiate a disaster, if it can then the system is broken.

@slome815

3 жыл бұрын

I'm an industrial engineer, but I only went to university after working as a machinist for a couple of years. I don't know if it's the same in civil engineering, but as a machinist we would get drawings of stuff that couldn't be made, designs of mechanisms that we knew couldn't possible work. Engineers were certainly not well respected. Once I was in university I understood why. Most of them they came from an entirely theoretical education, had never really worked on any machines, did barely know what a lathe or milling machine was. When they did system analysis their calculations where entirely theoretical. They could calculate PID values, but couldn't tune a servo system in reality. And most of them got their degree while being incompetent beyond believe.

@fr89k

3 жыл бұрын

@@slome815 Well, it's not their job to actually build or maintain it. However, there is something like "Design for manufacturability" or "Design for maintainability", etc. ("Design for X" if you want everything). And that is still not taught at every university and also the extend in which it is taught is often still not sufficient. But as I said: It's not the job of an engineer to actually build that stuff. However, an engineer who develops products should always take into account that this needs to be manufactured later by someone. If you break your fingers during assembly of the prototype, it is certainly not ready for series production... I know that engineers are often not well regarded, because they can't assemble or maintain the thing that they constructed, but mechanics often don't see that mechanics are also no gods. If mechanics could do the job of an engineer, we wouldn't need to have engineers study for 3 or 5 years at an university. A mechanic can for sure design simple things, but for sure he can't design a car that meets modern safety and efficiency standards while keeping the material costs as low as possible. People just need to understand what their job is and what they can't do, but other people can. Only then can a team work efficiently - when everybody values the skills of other team members...

@slome815

3 жыл бұрын

​@@fr89k Frankly, the last 2 years of my master's degree were nearly useless. I learned a lot more usefull things about designing, strenght calculations, PID, fluid mechanics in my professional bachelor years then I ever did when I went for my masters degree . The problem is not that many engineers can't maintain or build their designs, that's a given. The problem is that many engineers can't properly design a product. We had to make constant calls about dumb designs. (do we really need that 10µm tolerance on that handwheel?, Does that 15cm deep wheight saving pocket really need a 0.5mm corner on all sides.) The answer was usually, "oh I didn't think it mattered." And about safety. If you ever have been involved in a risk analysis to get a product CE rated you know how much of a joke it really is. After a couple of years working as an engineer I was so tired and dissapointed by the endless meetings about minor design changes and the lack of common sense of my bosses, that I quit and went to work a a CAD and machine shop teacher. A lot less pay, but at least I sometimes get the feeling I'm actually getting something done. Self thought engineers can be just as good. In fact some of the best engineers were self thought: James Watt, Tesla, Edison, Henry Ford and the Wright brothers were all self thought.

I was 9 years old, but I lived through the Teton Dam disaster and remember it vividly to this day. This story has always been a horrifying fascination to me.

I live a few minutes away from this dam. This is the best documentary that I've seen on the dam. You are very thorough. I will add one bit of information that I saw from another documentary. Mullholland had instructed that the dam would be built with a higher quality of concrete than what was actually used, which adds another component of potential failure into the mix. The density of the concrete used was found in later testing not to be up to the specs laid out by Mullholland. That being said, I think that even if all of the failures of this dam were removed during construction that it would only be a matter of time before the dam broke anyways. The canyon that the dam was built in goes back for miles and about every 6 years or so we get some serious flooding. I'm not an engineer, but I can't imagine that it would have held up under one of these floods that would have backed up a massive amount of water volume up the canyon.

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@Ymnar

3 жыл бұрын

@@PlainlyDifficult gonna add to this and say I've taken the official tour of this dam twice with the Santa Clarita Historical Society, and this video was more informative then their annual tour

@765kvline

3 жыл бұрын

In order to save money for cement preparation, the actual sand found in the bottom of the site was mixed with lime and used in the actual dam. Part of the problem, too, was the base of the dam intersected an ancient geological landslide. Directly beneath the dam was very hard conglomerate. Unfortunately, conglomerate becomes lose and muddy when mixed with water and its density flows through your fingers. What was not mentioned was that the Dam Keeper's son was also lost that night. Bodies of either were never found and presumably washed out to sea.

@Davivd2

3 жыл бұрын

@@765kvline Thanks for the extra info. I enjoy learning more and more about this incident as the years go by and a drive by the few chunks of concrete that still exist on my way into town.

Thank you for pronouncing “butte”” correctly! I listened to another narrator talk about the “”Elephant butt dam””, while laughinng mine off 😂!

@ianmacfarlane1241

3 жыл бұрын

There should be a Butt Butte somewhere.

@petergray2712

3 жыл бұрын

Anybody who ever lived would tell you that Butt was the correct pronunciation, as it was the ass end of nowhere.

@DavidCurryFilms

3 жыл бұрын

Elephant "Butte" is right next to a town called "Truth or Consequences" (they voted to name it after a TV show). Also home to the Toy-Box killer 🤯😱

@GoSlash27

3 жыл бұрын

I always pronounce it "booty". Funnier that way :D

@johnladuke6475

3 жыл бұрын

Heh heh. Damn elephant butt.

What a lovely way to start a Saturday.

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@hotcreamyfart

3 жыл бұрын

@@PlainlyDifficult No sir, thank you!

@BenderTheBoiler

3 жыл бұрын

@@PlainlyDifficult You're the best

@chesspiece81

3 жыл бұрын

For everyone except those living downstream

@almilhouse9059

3 жыл бұрын

Must have been a late night 🤣 starting a Saturday around 3 pm

This disaster was also covered in depth by Ask a Mortician on KZread and the two of you are literally the only people I’ve heard talk about it. Seems odd it’s not more well known!

@toby-jeanne_almy

3 жыл бұрын

I see my recommended is spot on💀😂

@gaudenciomanaloto6443

3 жыл бұрын

Tom Scott did a vid about this years ago as well

@dustinwashburn1283

3 жыл бұрын

I've seen a few. It was an actual TV documentary that brought my attention too this incident though, and it was the thing that was on my mind as the dam above my town was having issues.

@Backroad_Junkie

3 жыл бұрын

I must have seen over a half-dozen docs on this disaster. It was Mulholland, after all. They even went over this disaster in Ken Burn's "The West". It's a very well known event.

@hcombs0104

2 жыл бұрын

There was a PBS documentary on dams in 1997 that covered this. Included was some rather gruesome footage of recovery efforts.

You took an uncharacteristic but welcome and appropriately serious tone when discussing this. Highly appreciated.

I have read this story many times and I strangely always come away with an appreciation and respect for Mulholland. The way he accepted full responsibility instead of blaming those in charge of the construction is refreshing. I can only imagine that a similar incident nowadays would result in an endless circle of finger pointing. I also respect the fact that he was self taught and was so prolific in his career. I think his life should be celebrated in the civil engineering community instead of this one disaster defining him. Without Mulholland the city of Los Angeles may never have grown to be one of the largest residential areas in the country.

@emilschw8924

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed! He had the guts to shoulder the blame.

@carlrossi7989

3 жыл бұрын

From the last slide in Dr. Roger's Presentation: "REQUIEM FOR MULHOLLAND " • Like any person, Bill Mulholland had weak points in his character. • His thirst for thriftiness was one of these flaws, but that same trait allowed Los Angeles to build its municipal infrastructure AHEAD of its burgeoning population, at rock bottom prices • He had an enormous capacity for innovation; getting difficult projects completed on-time and on-budget. • Engineers of that era tended to underestimate the complexities of pore pressure response, especially, on concrete dams • He had the depth of character to accept responsibility for shortcomings in the dam’s design and construction which very few people at the time fully comprehended :

@jessepolka

3 жыл бұрын

To boot, From all I have read about the issue, is that Mulholland did not get an Engineering degree. His degree was for another engineering specialty. But because he was already Chief of Works, the oversight was not noted. He was a very Big Shot before the catastrophe.

@hcombs0104

2 жыл бұрын

Mulholland was a man of a long-ago generation.

I live about 12 miles away from the disaster site (in Valencia, CA) and always take people for a hike that visit me in that area and tell them the story. This is the best video documentary I’ve seen on this disaster. I love your videos in general!! Thanks :)

@OneBasedGod

Жыл бұрын

What part? I live in Newhall id like to check it out

The moment I heard "self-taught", I knew what kinda failure this would be. Not that that's innately a red flag, just that it's the sort of thing one only brings up ominously

@NetAnon

3 жыл бұрын

A self-taught engineer would never fly today. Even comparatively simple things like culvert design would require a degree. This could have only happed in 1920s America.

@Gitaxianjack

3 жыл бұрын

@@NetAnon that's because at the start of his career the US was still recovering from the civil war and there were no universities that specialized in engineering or geology. I find it inspiring that he learned from trial and error.

@johnladuke6475

3 жыл бұрын

It's also worth considering the state of the field at the time. What an "engineer" needed to know in the 1910's and 20's was a long way from the amount there is to learn today. I agree that you shouldn't let a "self-taught" anyone direct a major public project, but some of the things we teach as textbook engineering failures today hadn't happened yet when this was built.

@NetAnon

3 жыл бұрын

@Acme Inc. American Healthcare is over priced and the treatment side is underfunded. Most of the cost discrepancy between American and other nations healthcare is in administration, middlemen for insurance, and inflated drug prices. I hope for a socialized healthcare system in the next 20 years as that would indeed lower costs of administration and healthcare in general, it would also point to improvement towards the overall political climate and a willingness to pass more progressive policies.

Your voice sounds a bit more serious for some reason, which is kinda weird in a nice sort of way.

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

😬

@jenniferbaldini3527

3 жыл бұрын

Well, it was pretty serious, he did rate it as a blue plastic 8, on the patented Plainly Difficult scale...😉

I really appreciate that you say the number on the plainly difficult disaster scale in this video, it's a small change but it means a lot to me

I was expecting the distracted boyfriend meme when you said Mulholland was distracted by a Colorado river aqueduct.

When I first learned about this disaster, I dug into it HARD. Last I saw, there are still remnants of the dam. It was just such a jawdropping failure.

I read "Man Made Disaster" in 1964 in junior high school and arranged to have my brother drive us up to the dam site. It has changed a good bit over the past 57 years. First, we drove up the old road, and it was clear where the dam was because the terrain to the north of the site was lush, green and wooded. The area below was still scoured and nearly barren. Of course, it had only been 36 years since the disaster. The wing wall was intact, and the steps of the "tombstone" were more visible. We brought back a chunk of concrete from one of the downstream sections. We had also talked our way into Powerplant # 2 during our 1964 trip. We saw the transformer that was wrenched out of the basement and tossed down the canyon, fished out, welded back together and re-used. I went back in the late 1980s. I hooked up with a Boy Scout troop and their scoutmasters, one who had a copy of the book. It was interesting to be among young men who were my age when I first saw the dam. It was clear that the wing wall had been demolished with explosives, not natural weathering. We went together to San Francisquito Powerplant # 1 and had a fascinating tour. The Pelton Wheel generators still had their "50 Hz buckets", designed to generate 50-cycle power that ran Los Angeles until the early 1950s. I have visited the ruins of the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, PA, and, at the end of the summer, I am going on a military history tour in Belgium and France, then flying to Italy to see the Vajont Dam, the site of the October, 1963 landslide that sent a 750' tsunami down a narrower canyon, killing over 3,000 people. I have long been haunted about the St. Francis Dam. I will return sometime, in the next few years,

Been waiting for this one !!

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

The wait is over

keep them coming!!! in the middle of my shitty life right now, new content is greatly appreciated

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@gothicalpha

3 жыл бұрын

You ok fam?

@justingrell5297

3 жыл бұрын

You are appreciated and I hope your week goes well.

How have I only just noticed the little black and white bar before the breaks? That’s a right blast from the past. 🙂

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Welcome to itv of the 90s

@5roundsrapid263

3 жыл бұрын

American networks back then had a short tone before local ad breaks. It sounded like a touch-tone phone.

I first had an inkling of this disaster many years when we visited a cemetery in the Santa Paula area. We started to realize the abnormally large number of burials in March 1928. There were many families with the same date of death. I later heard of this disaster from a friend. Such a sad situation.

I didnt know about this until I saw Caitlin Doughty's video "The Massive LA Disaster You've Never Heard Of" and honestly I never heard of this incident at all. it seems like an incident that seconds from disaster would have covered

an "acre-foot" has to be the single most stupid unit of volume that has ever existed.

@HendrikTheThird

3 жыл бұрын

It kinda makes sense though, you partition a volume with a large surface area that varies with elevation into smaller 'slices' sort of like a Riemann sum. It's dumb, but also seems to be pretty practical and intuitive.

@seanworkman431

3 жыл бұрын

@@HendrikTheThird and easily manipulated. Measure the volume of a salad bowl, then a bread tray, if they have the same surface area the volume will vary thus the weight will vary considerably. The difference between 3 000 000 m3 and 4 000 000 m3 is a a million tonnes. An important calculation I suggest. Bernard appears in the dictionary but no description of his feats.

@Champion0fTheWorld

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah get with the metric system people..

@mihan2d

3 жыл бұрын

@@Champion0fTheWorld B-b-b-but muh freedom, muh democracy...

My dad and I hiked there around 2000, during a period when nobody cared about it anymore. At that time the road through the canyon went right through the former dam itself. Today, the road has been moved westward and under the west wing of the former dam. It’s an amazing place to explore and visualize where the dam was and the destruction left behind.

Him taking full responsibility is impressive, can anyone imagine that today?

@jwenting

3 жыл бұрын

I would, and many of my (former) colleagues. But someone in such a politically charged position? No.

@lairdcummings9092

3 жыл бұрын

Mulholland caused every one of those deaths through his arrogance and corner-cutting; he was warned, he was told when the failure began, and still he did nothing. Negligent mass homicide. Depraved indifference. He gets no respect from me. ~ fifth generation native of the Los Angeles basin.

@violentnomad7267

3 жыл бұрын

Personal responsibility is a dying trait

@abrahamlincoln9758

3 жыл бұрын

@@lairdcummings9092 Does he have any living descendants? They should be made to pay reparations.

@Doping1234

3 жыл бұрын

@@abrahamlincoln9758 The US is not north korea

What I’ve learnt about dams from this channel is that overly engineered is always better, even if it costs more

There's a lot of interesting stuff about Mulholland (and the general fuckery surrounding L.A. water) in the book Cadillac Desert

@DocNo27

3 жыл бұрын

Yes - it's more than a little biased in it's hatred of the US Bureau of Reclamation, but it's still a detailed and fascinating account - a book that anyone who lives in the American Southwest should absolutely read.

@haroldwhitt

3 жыл бұрын

@@DocNo27 the reason for the percieved bias is that reclamation has failed in all its projects to paybfor themselves by genetating electricity and charging money for the water... Never recoverd the cost of any project... Though all the proposals submitted claimed they would pay for themselves..

So what's a 1 on the disaster scale? Spilled milk?

@KarlBunker

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah; there's no use crying until you get up to at least 2.

@petergray2712

3 жыл бұрын

Broken pencil lead.

Great video! You mentioned the uplift failure but didn't mention why the center section did not fail... Uplift was a very new and theoretical concept at the time and mathematically showed that concrete dams could not use the same weight-to-vertical ratios as earthen dams because mud slurry is more dense than concrete. Earthen dams don't suffer from uplift failure since they are not a single unit structure like concrete dams are. Not to mention the (water-soluble) limestone veins, reported in the geological surveys at the foundation that were ignored. The St Francis damn was built with a somewhat new, uplift-relief design of vertical columns built within the center section. Unfortunately this design concept came to be after the abutments (left and right side) of the damn were already complete. The center section (the tombstone) DID have uplift-relief columns installed and did not become buoyant which is why it survived while the previously constructed abutments (without uplift-relief columns) did not.

Incredible to read all of this admiration for Mulholland. I’m not sure what my favourite Mulholland moment was; draining Owens Valley creating a carcinogenic dust bowl that will continue to blight the entire west coast of the US, or ensuring that vital farmland in the north of california is imperilled due to water exporting. Come the fuck on.

@Fyre0

3 жыл бұрын

Notice how people always get fkn ego boner when they read about exploitation and theft of the humble many for the benefit of more powerful few.... Jfc

@Erakius323

3 жыл бұрын

He had drive, ambition and determination. He became a self-taught engineer. And when he accidentally caused a massive disaster, he admitted responsibility and retired. At which point he was already in his 70’s. He was a man of great character. That’s why people admire him. I know nothing about his personal flaws or the massive damage his polices have caused. Both of which I am sure are long lists.

@dzhang4459

2 жыл бұрын

@@Erakius323 Admitted fault and retired... at the end of his life when he had nothing to loose. Not very impressive. Admitting fault is the bare minimum one should do. It's not praise worthy.

@Erakius323

2 жыл бұрын

@@dzhang4459 When was the last time a politician admitted fault? You think Pelosi will ever admit fault for her insider trading?

@HiDefHDMusic

2 жыл бұрын

@@Erakius323 the city of LA hired him to steal water and that’s what he did. They wanted a self taught engineer because a real one would’ve told them no.

I absolutely love your videos, which is why I want to provide a bit of criticism: I feel like it would be helpful to include 3 types of maps when you say "which is about here on a map": Show where the country is, show where the region is, and show the local area. In a lot of videos but especially this one it's really hard to tell what the map is showing or to get a concept of what it's near. In archaeological contexts we use multiple maps so I thought it would be prudent to suggest. Love your content as always, cannot wait to continue learning with your next video.

I really enjoy your dam videos. I worked at a hydro electric power station and part of my job was inspection of the dam twice a week which was much larger than this one, it was built in the 70s before computer simulation so they built a large scale model of the entire dam and catchment, filled it with water etc. There were two cracks in the dam, both about 2/3 of the way up on each side on the side not facing the water, they didn't leak and there was no concern about them as the scale model did exactly the same thing and it was expected to happen, amazing engineering for the time.

“Exacerbated” is a fun word to say. You have all the sounds. With a little practice, you could teach your brain not to default to the easier “exaggerated.” Although both fit, disasters are always exacerbated by something, and Plainly, no exaggeration is needed to display the horror of the St. Francis dam failure.

@Unb3arablePain

3 жыл бұрын

Just make sure not to get it confused with the word "exasperated", which some do!

@casbyness

3 жыл бұрын

Your comment is funny because you're trying to correct him for not saying exacerbated correctly, but then you mix up exaggerated with exasperated. :)

@William-Morey-Baker

3 жыл бұрын

Those aren't synonyms...

@Unb3arablePain

3 жыл бұрын

@@casbyness I was referring to how some of my co-workers write it "exasperated the issue at ____" when they should be using "exacerbated".

@blatherskite3009

3 жыл бұрын

That's a darn curious choice of hill upon which to plant the flag of pedantry when the narration on this video contains several actual crimes against the English language, such as "analysis-es", "monumentous", and "Mulholland raised through the ranks" :)

Will you cover the Johnstown Dam failure and the destruction of Johnstown?

Caitlin Doughty did a good video on this as well. Combining Plainly Difficult's video and hers, you get a really indepth understanding of what happened here and how it affected people then and even now.

Mulholland's famous quote about the disaster: "Whether it is good or bad, don't blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human, I won't try to fasten it on anyone else."

I remember requesting this topic back when I first found your channel. An interesting watch, as always.

Spencer dam in nebraska when. I drove through the area after the failure, and man it was something else.

@765kvline

3 жыл бұрын

Yes the old Spencer Dam was hit hard by flooding. I remember it well.

This is my Community... I am glad you covered this!

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Hope you enjoyed it!

I'm really enjoying your videos. Informative, and entertaining, while being short and to the point! I subbed!

YAY! My Favorite man made disaster. I first heard of this from the book and PBS movie "Cadillac Desert", which is about how the Owens Valley, once the jewel of agriculture in California, was robbed of its water by William Mulholland and pals. I was then fortunate enough to live in the LA area around the turn of the century, and got to 4x4 through the area of the dams remains on several occasions. You can actually drive right through the where the dam was on San Fransiquito Canyon road. Its a bit hard to tell where things were at first, but you can still see the foundation of the dam there and there used to be giant chunks of the dam around the area. There was also a tall tale about how, at the moment the dam failed, there was a van full of gold driving across it carrying the pay for the army or something, and it was never found. While I mourn the senseless loss of life, I'm still fascinated by this engineering disaster. I also watched another documentary about the dam, which concluded that there was a rift in the embankment from a long ago earthquake, that they could not have known about then, as they didn't have ground piercing radar back then, and it was most likely the cause of the landslide and subsequent failure of the dam. Wish I could remember where I saw that. Great work as always!

Perfect timing I just watched Chinatown last night.

Locally this was known as San Francisquito Dam, even though the formal name was St. Francis. I grew up near there.

My great-grandfather was working for Edison in the camp below the dam that day. The dam failed due to multiple factors according to some more recent reports. One of the sides of the valley the dam was built on was the location of an ancient fault line that was only discovered due to more modern technology. The engineering knowledge at the time was not advanced enough to fully account for all factors of construction like concrete contraction and hydrostatic pressure. Mulholland also did not just quietly retire, when he first heard of the dam collapsing he was absolutely crushed. He never forgave himself for the damage he caused. He died after living for years with the crushing regret of what had happened. He was a brilliant visionary who helped Los Angeles develop to what it is today, but circumstance and the prestige he earned as a prominent figure placed him in a situation that was beyond his skills without realizing it. What ultimately happened robbed my father and his siblings of a grandfather long before they were born, but it would be unfair to lay the blame entirely on him.

My favorite example of a great dam in the wrong place is Vajont Dam. I would love to visit it and try out my Italian there. Such a tragedy on so many levels. What an incredibly well built dam it was! However, it is nearly inconceivable to me that so many warning signs had been ignored and construction proceeded anyway. The death and destruction was horrendous--just as St. Francis, Teton, Johnstown and other calamities. Engineering hubris in the face of the obvious is a major factor in bridge, dam and building catastrophes.

Hmmm. I wonder if I haven’t heard as much about this one before because Mr. Mullholland took responsibility. Normally companies and people try to pass the blame.

The guy in charge acknowledged responsibility and resigned. Such things do not happen nowadays.

@olivercharles2930

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, that totally brought back all the innocent killed and the land stolen.

Every year, on the anniversary of the dam’s failure, groups of people visit the site and sit in silence at the exact time of the failure. Kind of haunting. Traveling up the canyon, you can see the destructive remnants. Parts of the canyon are steep and narrow, meaning many had no chance of escaping a wall of water over 100 feet high.

i love getting up saturday morning and see a new upload!

"ac. ft" Nah I swear freedom land just making up means of measurement now 😂 Informative video as always I've actually never heard of that one 😶

@zrspangle

3 жыл бұрын

Acres of surface by depth of area

@T_Mo271

3 жыл бұрын

Acre-feet is a real thing in hydro engineering. It is a volume of water that covers a one-acre area to a depth of one foot. It's about 1/3 of a million gallons.

@kirkc9643

3 жыл бұрын

Unbelievable. I'm 49 and know my imperial units fairly well but it was a new one on me. Just when you think the non-metric system can't get any sillier. I'm surprised they didn't use bushels.

At 7:19 what's that black and white symbol in the top right hand corner?

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

It’s to let you know when the adverts are coming

@Treblaine

3 жыл бұрын

@@PlainlyDifficult Ahh, now I know what to google I recognise it. It's called a cue mark, right?

@5roundsrapid263

3 жыл бұрын

@@PlainlyDifficult I knew already, but I’m a bit of a classic TV geek.

I love learning about these types of disasters that happened 20 minutes from where I live. Same with being at the foot of the mountain that Rocketdyne was located on.

I like this calmer tone of commentary Quite soothing to listen to

Fancy another video? Check this one about the Tokyo Metro Terrorist Sarin attack kzread.info/dash/bejne/Yo2gw8awhbTFgbw.html

Someone watches that nice mortician lady videos. Let's see how it compares.

I like you back ground music. And your microphone is alot better now. Keep up the good work and I enjoy your content and videos.

Nice work as always! Loved the background music on this one.

PD: *Makes video about a dam.* Me, *In the voice of Beavis* "Huh. That’s something. Really? Haha. Well, I’ll be damned! Yeah, I just got one question, um: Is this a 'God Dam'?”

@johnladuke6475

3 жыл бұрын

That's him officer! Those are the kids who are always h'wackin in my shed!

"Self taught engineer" WELL I WONDER HOW THINGS COULD GO WRONG...

@jueabaddon2168

3 жыл бұрын

Well, we got our knowledge from somewhere. You can't go to school for things no one's done before...

I live about 40-50 miles from the area, fascinating the things you learn about where you live sometimes.

Always interesting. Keep up the good work fella and stay safe.

If anyone is interested in the human side of this story, I suggest checking out Ask A Mortician's video on the same subject. Thanks for such a well researched video Plainly Difficult.

Self taught engineer, overseeing massive civil projects Guess he incrementally completed larger and larger projects n they just figured he hasn't killed anyone yet....must be fine 👍

@90enemies

3 жыл бұрын

Right...you should look him up its a fun read. He's self taught but he's quite the brilliant person. A human error is a human error no matter what degree you have or how long you studied. Just look at Malpasset dam. I'm not excusing his action that leads to the death of hundreds, but don't discredit the man of his achievements and capabilities.

@765kvline

3 жыл бұрын

There have been highly professional engineers who didn't ignore the rules of mechanical stress but simply forgot the lessons in their attempts to trade appearance for structural integrity. Leon Moisseiff was a "professional," not self-taught, and had many successful bridges under his belt until the Tacoma Narrows 1940 Bridge took him down.

Great video and well covered as always. Love the audio on this video too-new mic?

Great content as usual but a note about the vocalization itself. I much prefer this style than the ‘uptalking’ vocal fry way that others have been read. It’s almost like you took it down a notch and it comes off SO much better. So very much better. Please do them all like this, this was easy to listen to and understand despite being a very disturbing story. Just on a technical level, this was really good.

"self taught engineer" excuse me wat

It's amazing what power water has to make things get out of its' way, cos if there's a way, it'll find it... :P

@leohippelainen3404

Жыл бұрын

It sure didn't find its way to the african children

Always a good Saturday when I get me some new plainly difficult, Dam good job sir, keep it up!

Love your videos man

Oh, did you see the one Caitlin daughty did on this? She might be right up your alley.

@gd2234_

3 жыл бұрын

I KNEW I RECOGNIZED THE REMAINS OF THE DAM FROM SOMEWHERE! I know both these channels will do this disaster justice though. Caitlin focuses on the human/death side of things, while Plainly focuses on the mechanisms of disaster. It would be really cool to have a crossover explaining how the mechanisms of disaster affected the human/death side of things.

Dam puns below 👇 Check me out on Twitter twitter.com/Plainly_D Fancy some of my merch? teespring.com/en-GB/stores/plainly-difficult Fancy supporting me on patreon? www.patreon.com/Plainlydifficult

@scottl.1568

3 жыл бұрын

If this is only an '8' on your scale, I don't want to see a '9'

Hey! Small thing, but I'm happy that you've started to say the number on the disaster scale! I often listen to these videos while drawing, and it's sometimes odd when you state that it's here on the disaster scale and nothing else said and so I end up not knowing, but it's a nice change!

This is the best dam Chanel on youtube

Did you get a new mic or something?

I've been up all night waiting for this

@PlainlyDifficult

3 жыл бұрын

Blimey! Make sure you get some sleep!

@Rammstein0963.

3 жыл бұрын

Brekky first, then coma...😁

Several years ago I went to the site. Not much left besides large chunks of concrete. Pretty eerie standing where a dam that size used to be and thinking about how proud they probably were of their achievement and how quickly that feeling vanished when it failed and took the lives of hundreds.

can you imagine having your whole dam swept away and having to think about that every day for the rest of your life? even if not criminally responsible for it?

4:13 Exacerbated, not exasperated.

A job well done. Thanks for the vid. More information about an event I thought I knew well.

Thanks for all you do!

As soon as I heard the phrase ‘self taught engineer’ I knew this was going nowhere good.

@twotone3471

3 жыл бұрын

Why? A lot of engineering back then was done by such. You think Orville and Wilbur Wright had a areospace engineering degree or something? Or all structures designed by certified eggheads are bulletproof and unflappable? This guy literally supervised the creation of a aqueduct network greater than Ancient Rome, and we get to judge him on his failures and ignore his success?

And that's why engineers have to take calculus.

I much approve of the style of narration in this video, compared to others by Mr. Plainly Difficult. :)

I literally live over the hill from Fillmore and Santa Paula. I had heard that there was a famous flood in Santa Paula but never really looked into the cause. I always just assumed it was a naturally occurring one. You learn something new everyday.