10 Massive Dam Failures Caught On Camera 

Edenville Dam: 100 years. I don’t think the problem was caused by the original builders. Seems more like it’s the fault of people thinking it was just going to last forever without adequate maintenance.

A childhood friend talked about his grandparents living downstream from a dam in West Virginia back in the 50's, while working as a geologist at a nearby coal company. His grandma kept complaining about that dam made her nervous and eventually his granddad got another job in Pittsburgh. About a few years later, the dam collapsed due to heavy rains and failure by the coal company to maintain the spillways properly. Their house was wiped out and several neighbors died from the collapse and subsequent flooding. Turns out grandma had legitimate concerns and a family history of disaster. Grandma's family had been running a farm downstream of the Saint Francis dam in the San Francisquito valley (moved there after WWI as part of the Westward migration of Vets after the war). They had gone to another family's home for a big get together and came back to no farm, no buildings, and no workers. At least a dozen of their Mexican migrant workers died or disappeared that night after the collapse of the dam. They sold off the land to the state water commission (who was frantically trying to cover up the disaster losses). Later when a family member went back (during WWII) they found that state had never counted the dozen migrant workers that his family listed (by name and place of birth) as missing and only one dead (the only migrant from their farm found downstream and identified by her father). Estimates are that over 1,000 people actually died that night and California undercounted the losses (mainly the migrant workers) due the outcry against Los Angeles Water Works and Supply and William Mulholland (a self-taught engineer who designed and built the dam). Most of these disasters were preventable, but due to money and politics many dams were built even though local people (and even competent engineers) thought it was a bad idea.

Damn those damn dams.

im brazilian and the brumadinho dam disaster was widely covered by media. It turns out it was very negligenciated by the VALE corporation, who chose profit over security, and all warnings by specialists were dismissed. It resulted in lots of deaths and the firefighters spent months crawling in the mud to recover the missing bodies. The body recovery operation ended two years later with a handful of bodies still missing. It was a great environmental catastrophe too, doing irreparable damage to the fauna and flora where it passed through, and destroying a couple of rivers. "Fun" fact, 4 years ago a similar dam collapsed from the same corporation, doing the same environmental damage and with lots of human losses, it was the mariana dam incident. Watching the brumadinho dam collapse and its effects felt like I was rewatching the same episode

#10 What the narrator failed to mention is that when the Edenville dam failed, all the water from Wixom Lake went downstream to the Sanford Lake dam in Sanford and caused that one to fail as well.

I would NEVER live downstream of a dam. Never. My town suffered an embankment break of a big canal for shipping during construction that was only half full at this time. The destruction was massive and several people died. It was in the 70s and my Dad worked at the port authority for that shipping canal that was already built and was partly in use on the other side of a lock. - And it always amazes me that people try running from water away instead of uphill... And thank you for showing actual dam breaks instead of just water release from dams.

I actually saw an ice damn give way on the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh in the 90s. I was with my friend and his uncle helping them retrieve a tow truck that had broken down earlier. We heard a weird creaking and loud booms, we looked back at the river (which is a fairly massive river, its easily 150 yards across down by the city) and saw HUGE truck sized chunks of ice playing leap frog and tumbling down river at a scary fast pace. A few barges had come loose of their moorings and slammed into a RR bridge pylon (the booms). We watched it for a while and then took off to get away from the banks just in case it got worse. The next day the news said flooding damage down in the city had occured. Nature can be scary.

Nature always wins. Nature always finds a way,

I’ve seen many of the videos in this, but there has never been any info given as to where and why the disaster happened. Thank you for the info you provided along with the visuals.

I lived in Edenville at one time, I used to wonder what things would look like if the dam in question failed. I used to commute past that area at one time.

I once resided in Edenville, and I often pondered the potential aftermath if the dam in question were to fail. There was a period when I would commute past that very area

I don't know about anyone else but for me watching huge pieces of grass sliding down a bank looks crazy & I can't stop watching it.

After the 1959 Hebgen quake in southwest Montana, there were fears that the earth fill dam at Hebgen Lake might fail, esp. With the aftershocks. So there were extensive checks on the solidity of the dam after. Since it was also hydroelectric, the examinations were supercritical. Fortunately it didn't fail, but several of the towns downstream were evacuated until the safety checks were done.

Here in England we had a very near dam failure in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire in about 2019. The dam was on high ground and it would have been catastrophic if it failed. Water was seen leaking from the embankment and towns were on high alert. They managed to drain nearly the entire reservoir into the nearby river, which saved the day. Poor maintenance was blamed on this occasion. The dam is now safe and refilled but I imagine those living nearby will be on high alert for quite some time to come.

I lived a little ways (fortunately upstream) away from Edenville and it was absolutely poir maintenance and neglect that caused it. The owner was warned so many times that it was in very poor condition and needed immediate action but he refused to do anything.

Dams can be very scary things -- I would NEVER live right below one or even a number of miles down from one! Good narration, thanks for posting these interesting situations! We have been in a warming trend for two decades, and moisture that normally held soil together, is waning and we are seeing the effects of that now. With lack of moisture to hold soil together, the soil is breaking loose and causing landslides in many places today! Gravity always rules! If the trees are the kind that have taproots, they may hold, but those trees whose roots spread out under the soil instead of growing straight down, will lose their hold in floods.

In 2018 my grandparents sold their property on wixom lake. We were upset cause it was a great vacation spot. But my grandparents old cottage on the lake could be seen from the overhead view of the failed dam. Crazy how lucky we got with not being stuck with that property.

I'm thinking that a damn that lasted 100 was built correctly. Sounds like it held up pretty good to me. This has been a pretty dam good video.

The earthen Teton dam collapse in eastern Idaho in 1976 caused alot of damage as well

Living in Northern California just south of Auburn (#7). We can go months with no rain, then all of a sudden get hit with several inches of rain. Mix that with steep mountains and narrow gorges and you can get really bad flash floods.

That motor grader holding up the vans trying to escape the work zone was unassed by the driver earlier. He left it running in gear, and it blocked the road. Heroes are everywhere.

I grew up on the Mississinawa reservoir/river in Indiana. My grandparents had a cottage downstream from the spillway. I believe the spillway tunnel is 40 feet in diameter and can remember some years of heavy rains the reservoir would back up all the way to Marion and they would open it up as far as they could. It used to scare the bejesus out of me. Our dock being submerged and that water rushing by. It's a powerful sight when they crack it open. The sirens, the roar of the water, the spray...especially at night.

One of the most disastrous failure of a dam was the Vajont dam failure in Italy in 1963. About 2000 people lost their lives.

ESTO QUE MIRO PASO MUCHOS AÑOS ATRAS,PERO ROMPE EL CORAZON 💔 😢 😔 😪

Hurricane Agnes in the 1970's broke dams along the entire east coast. My town lost its reservoir dam, a downstream hydroelectric dam, a 100 year old steel girder bridge, Rt. 1 Bridge and one of two spans on I-95. The railroad bridge survived. There was 10 feet of water over the hydro dam before it burst. No water or school for a week. Electricity out for days too. Nothing like the Johnstown floods(two) from broken dams in Pennsylvania. The one in the 1880's killed 2000+.

👍🤔💭 it's unlikely that the original builders could have foreseen the issues that caused the Edenville Dam failure. It's unfortunate that the necessary maintenance and updates were not prioritized, leading to such a devastating event. It's important to remember that infrastructure requires ongoing attention and care in order to remain functional and safe. This is especially true for dams, which can have catastrophic consequences if they fail.

I am most disturbed by the person who captured a dam failing in real-time and kept his phone vertical

Small dams can be dangerous too. In the 80s, my mom was the property manager & a resident of the first PUD (planned unit development) in Georgia. This mixed subdivision was clustered around a lake with a small dam. There was a piece of land between them & the Chattahoochee river. The city of Roswell allowed building of high priced townhomes there. The State came & drained Martin Lake leaving homeowners a muddy centerpiece instead of a lake. The board sued the City, county & State to recover the cost to upgrade to a class 1 dam & won! It always astounds me how dam failures get to the point of destruction, at least in the US.

The "Auburn Coffer Dam" section used stock footage of the Folsom Dam and the Nimbus Dam just below it. I've spent many hours at or near both.

10:00 beautiful cinematography

9.59 I love it how someone finds some fun among a harsh situation...

11:11 the dude running is a lot smarter then the camera man 😂😂😂

Would be cool if gir these kinds of videos of disasters channels would put links to charities that help those affected directly

Frejus dam broke in France almost 60 years ago. A wall of water tens of meters high was sent hurling downstream a the speed of a car. Many people died.

The first one is near my home, the flooding was terrible lots of farms were devastated, it could have been avoided if our governor wouldn't have refused funding to redo the 100 year old dam.

thumbs up to Tom who risked his life so we could see the horrible icy water rushing towards him and stand there filming it bravely.

Holly crap. That was some scary stuff for sure. I can't believe all of that has happened within the last 3 years.

Tom’s vertical filming truly deserved 1# most catastrophic dam failures.

Thanks for posting an actually good natural disaster video

Good compilation, ... and good presentation and narration too. .. I hate ones that treat the viewer as a moron, this is straight forward, fact based, (with maps) ... cheers for the upload

My grandparents home was flooded in the 86 flood in Northern California and I was exhausted from my home when the Oroville Dam almost failed after a huge hole opened up in the spillway causing it to quickly erode, water began spilling over the emergency spillway which was just a hillside, luckily the dam held and has been repaired

Ice dam guy: "Holy smokes!" and "Oh my gosh!" Nice family friendly exclamations there. I think I would have sounded more like Richard Pryor.

"When nature unleashes its wrath, it's a force to be reckoned with, thank you for showing us the raw power of these natural disasters."

I wish I had a dollar for every video someone filmed in portrait.

Almost had a dam collapse here in the UK, caused by a poor design over 100 years ago, and no effective remedial work being carried out. Although it IS a relatively tiny dam, the damage it would have caused would have been immense. NEVER underestimate the power of water!

Edenville Dam: A hundred years in the making. The issue probably didn't stem from its original builders. It's more a result of assuming it could withstand time without consistent maintenance

When I seen the small ones break, I was like “dam”. When I seen the big ones break, I was like “DAM”

Next you should make most terrifying things in space

Living in Hungary. I was totally shocked when heard what happend near Ajka. That red mud was highly alkaline water from aluminium factory's reservoir. It flooded across 40 square-kilometer...

Ice dam floods are regular on the Yellow River of China, since the river has a section that runs north by 760km and then south by 800km. The massive difference in latitudes caused a difference in ice forming and melting at difference sections of the river.

I worked at Samarco in Mariana until 2021 and in the month of that Mariana disaster I was sent to North Africa for a rolling machine maintenance workshop. I was saved by chance but lost 31 close friends who worked with me and their families to almost 100. I was empty and devastated to this day. I eventually retired at age 31 due to mental issues i couldn't handle. I and the rest of my friends' families are still waiting for compensation for the irreversible damage even when the court has already determined the action in our favor.

I assume the last video didnt show any damage to property and noone was hurt. That makes it a cool specticle of nature to witness not a dam failure or a disaster. Anyways, great video!

Red mud is primarily a mixture of concentrated caustic soda and iron oxide. Caustic soda does really nasty things to skin. It is what you get when you wash the stuff that isn’t aluminium oxide out of bauxite ore.

Small dams can indeed pose risks. In the 1980s, my mom served as the property manager and lived in Georgia's first Planned Unit Development (PUD). This community was situated around a lake with a small dam, separated from the Chattahoochee River by a piece of land. The city of Roswell permitted the construction of high-priced townhomes in that area. Subsequently, the State drained Martin Lake, leaving homeowners with a muddy area instead of a lake. The board filed a lawsuit against the City, county, and State to cover the costs of upgrading to a Class 1 dam, and they won! It always surprises me how dam failures escalate to the point of destruction, at least in the United States

That last one was P A T H E T I C

The edenville dam has a bit more complicated of a story than just poor management. It used to be operated and maintained by the state government but a couple decades ago it was sold to a private operator who didn't want to spend the money to maintain the dam

Imagine those people living in those area of what they had to suffer 😢

Amazing video thanks for making content like this. I think honourable mention should be failure when building dams. The building of dams like the one on the Tigris that flooded amazing archaeological sites are a huge failure.

Lembro como se fosse hoje com tristeza..😢

Kallanai(Grand Anaicut),Tamil Nadu,India The dam was built by The great karikala chola.It is more than 2000 years old and still functioning.

just a side note, my daughter lives on the Street from the dam in Sanford, it changed that little town, it wiped out just about everything there. Their mail delivery is just recently started to get to them on time. Water can do a lot of damage and in this case it could have been avoided if right people in charge would have taken care of business.

Spencer, NE dam on the Niobrara River collapsed a few years back. One person disappeared, never found.

These dam failures were not all ''caught on camera" which I was hoping to see. But I still enjoyed most of it.

Shout out to Tom who risked his life so we could see monstrous ice-cold water gushing toward him and stood there videoing it with courage.

That St. Johnsbury video wasn't a dam failure, it was just an ice plug breaking up in the spring thaw. Rivers in the northeast can be dangerous in spring.

' beautifully natural earth landslides / mudslides / big heavy rainy

I myself have seen several ice breaks and actually started two! It must have been close to the cross-country world record as I felt and heard the sound of the start of the ice break 50m from the safety of land! Then it wasn't about small pieces of ice like in the last video, but ice floes of around 20 square meters and half a meter thick that piled on top of each other and cleared absolutely everything in their path! Probably the most exciting thing I've been a part of...

Im sure all of englands dams now have to have some sort of sluce gate to empty the dam quickly and safely if the dam fails in any sort of way

Wow, those were some massive damn failures.

The furst dam in the video was manually triggerd. That's why the camera was on the right spot. I have seen a video where they explain why and how.

Scary knowing that many of these disasters only happened in recent years.. it’s only 2024

i love how when something happens in 2020 it gets blamed on someone from over a 100 years prior

Many of those, you probably wouldn't know it was coming before it reached you; the last one, he had no idea how big that was going to get - I'd have got out of there a lot quicker!

Out here in Kerala we have a mullaperiyar dam which is aged at 127 years when the monsoon arrives we become coutious about it and make predictions that it will burst today or tomorrow and when the rain goes all the predictions and assumptions goes with it is a seasonal trend in Kerala

oh man, on the last one i was waiting to see arwyn there, trying to hold off the nazgul.

A dam doesn't last 100 years if the ones that built it took shortcuts...

When the Edenville dam broke The water flooded much of Midland MI which is down stream. It drained the entire lake. It caused millions of dollars in the entire downtown and wiped out entire neighborhoods. Midland is the hometown of Dow Chemical and Dow Corning. They both have massive chemical plants there. Fortunately the flood missed those plants. I know Midland very well, my family owned a business there for years. It was called Dawn Donut. The dam broke because of years of neglect. In fact no one was even sure who owned the dam.

I don't understand why the companies involved in these catastrophes weren't punished.

The brumadinho dam failure was far from "without warnings", a lot of the vale do rio doce dam's have poor maintenance and have been neglected by the company, having mariana then brumadinho happen so close to each other is no coincidence. That's no chance, that's criminal neglect.

amazing video nice footage and crazy stories, 2:21 is wild

“There it goes, there it goes… there we go, there’s the rush”. Most Michigan comment ever

Time 13:00 "A backhoe tries to reverse away from danger..." Errr, no, that's a grader. A backhoe is something completely different...

LOOOOOL the number one worst of them all. “ he had to take a few steps back to avoid wet shoes”🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I’ve never been let down this much

This is kind of off topic, but for anyone interested in the history of the Hmong people in Laos and what happened to them, you should look into it. It's a relatively little known tragedy and fairly recent. I live in an area in TN that caught a lot of the Hmong refugees so I was fortunate enough to meet a few of them. Very messed up hand they got dealt, there aren't very man of them left, sadly.

You say that when the edenville dam was built in the twenties that they took shortcuts and that was typical. You have to remember that back then the science of dam building was nothing like today and also remember the type of equipment that was available back then. Horses pulling equipment and link belt cable drags and cranes. Not all work is deceitful. Painful as it is, these failures are what make things better because we learn from them so generation after generation man made structures are engineered better and better.

1:22 amazing how the engineers could not see this coming?

I used to love to fish downstream from any dam , always did my best catfishing in them but since RU-vid came out and I get to see all these videos . I NO LONGER FISH DOWN STREAM FROM ANY DAM !! as far as I know none of them have broke but just the thought gets the best of me , if I cant to enjoy fishing no need to go there.

13:10 "a backhoe tries to reverse....." That is a road grader and just before the operator jumped and ran!

Weather warfare, geoengineering, poor engineering and management. Great video!

Not the first time I've seen a damn failure, not the last 😂

@1:15 imagine being present for an event such as that and choosing to shoot in portrait mode.

Vale is pronounced "Val-eh" in English. The company cut corners in Brazil and their loose safety standards in Canada has cost them a lot of money and left a lot of blood on their hands.

Mr. Nowicki must have one of those fancy new vertical-only cameras.

These were all pretty terrifying and destructive, except #1…

Guys like Tom is why so many people drown in flash floods.

Back in the 1960s in wales, U.K. there was a village named abervan. Behind the school there, did have a coal tip. Apparently they built this tip which was a size of a mountain, on top of the underground spring. On this fatal day, the tip moved and engulfed the whole school, killing all most all of the children and teachers. It basically wiped out a whole generation in that little village.

What's with the last few frames of this upload being film of the river Spree in Berlin during the winter months? If that's not the Reichstag dome top left then I'm a Canadian Mountie :)

Well this video didn't disappoint! Some massive structural failures...the brazilian ones seemed the worst....200+ people killed....truly horrendous.

You should have listed the failure of the grand Teton dam , that's always a show stopper.

I’m thinking the same thing. A 100 year old dam has proved itself and its construction. It’s the classic, 'no adequate maintenance' and the powers that be, 'inventing reasons' to hide their own failings by blaming the original construction🙄