Dam Failures

Dam failures are of particular concern because the failure of a large dam has
the potential to cause more death and destruction than the failure of any other
man-made structure. This is because of the destructive power of the flood wave
that would be released by the sudden collapse of a large dam. Tailing dams,
which sometimes store toxic materials, may pose additional dangers eg Omai
Tailings Dam, Guyana failed in 1995 releasing cyanide slurries and Stava
Tailings Dam, Italy failed in 1985 killing 268 people. Many dams, both large
and small, have failed but only a few have had a significant impact on the
practice of dam design and engineering geology. The most common causes of
dam failures are:

Overtopping of embankment dams due to inadequate spillway discharge

capacity to pass flood waters. This is one of the most common causes of dam
failures and has nothing to do with the geology of the dam site. Any
embankment dam will fail if the spillway is too small and flood waters rise high
enough to flow over the top of the dam wall. The estimation of the size of the
maximum flood a dam will have to survive during its life is a science which has
undergone continuing evolution over the last century with the result that many
dams built decades ago may now be judged to have inadequate spillways even
though the spillways were designed to standards of safety which were accepted
as adequate at the time of construction of the dam. Many millions of dollars has
been spent upgrading the flood handling capacities of many existing dams, both
embankment and concrete dams, as a result.

The Burrinjuck Dam Flood Security Upgrading project is a recent example.

Faults in construction methods (eg inadequate compaction of fill) or use of the

wrong type of construction materials (eg silt) may lead to internal erosion or
piping failures of embankment dams. An example is the failure of the Teton
Dam in Idaho, USA in 1976.

Geological problems with the dam foundation. The failure of the St. Francis
Dam falls into this category. After the failure it was found that some of the
foundation rock, a conglomerate, disintegrated when the rock was immersed in
water so that the rock lost all its strength when saturated. This is exactly what
happened as the newly completed dam filled with water for the first time and
the dam failed shortly afterwards. Another example of a dam break due to
foundation failure is the Malpasset Dam in France which failed in 1959. This
was the first collapse of a modern, thin concrete arch dam.
Landslides which fall into the storage reservoir, sending a wave of water over
the top of the dam may cause a dam to fail, or the dam may survive if made of
concrete but a destructive flood may still devastate the river valley downstream
as happened at the Vaiont Dam in Italy in 1963 when over 1900 people were
killed.

Earthquakes can certainly cause damage to dams but complete failure of a large
dam due to earthquake damage appears to be very rare. The Lower San
Fernando Dam in California, USA did fail during an earthquake in 1971 which
caused the fill in the dam wall to liquefy resulting in the collapse of the
upstream part of the dam. A disastrous flood was only prevented because the
reservoir level happened to be low at the time of the earthquake and no water
escaped downstream.

Dams are likely to exist, perhaps for hundreds of years, even after they are no
longer required for their original purpose. During these years, dangerous
alterations to the operation of the dam and/or its structure may lead to failure
eg South Fork Dam (Johnstown) which failed in 1889. Incorrect operation of a
dam at any time can result in overtopping and failure eg Euclides da Cunha
Dam, Brazil which failed in 1977.