The Troubling Danger of Dams 

I have checked and double-checked and must tell you that dams are not, in fact, airplanes.

I work at 3 dams that are 100+ yrs old. This year we've spent $400,000 on maintenance. We just had our federal inspection and passed.

Thank you for drawing attention to this looming issue.

Small but happy correction: the Lake Hodges dam recently completed a full year of repair work, upgrading its rating from "poor" to "unsatisfactory." The region is planning to replace it with a new dam 100 feet downriver by 2034, and in the meantime have allocated resources for ongoing maintenance.

As a child in the 30s, my mother lived in a workers cottage on a floodplain. Twice a year they moved the furniture upstairs, watched the water wash in. Then cleaned the mud out and got on with life. In their retirement, my parents lived in a house half way up a mountain, 1000ft above the nearest river. Her priorities were absolute. I learned a lot from my mum

If you want to learn more about dam failure I highly recommend Pratical Engineering. he's got a bunch of videos on dams, and dams / critical infrastructure failure. The culprits are too often the same: maintenance budget cuts and inaction.

I was down river and my house is high ground. My neighbors brought all their farm equipment to my yard and left it for safety. I woke up with tractors and apology notes in my front yard. Great way to meet the neighbors during Covid

The Assuan dam at the river Nile in Egypt is also worth mentioning. Not only did it flood an enormous area with all mentioned consequences to the population and the environment, it also stopped the annual Nile floods. These floods brought fertile slit to the fields alongside the river, that had fed the people in the area for millennia. Of course they played a key role in the prosperity of ancient Egypt too.

honestly, as a dutchman, any piece of critical water-management infrastructure being privately owned is absolutely insane to me. Like these companies have no incentive to care about public safety, so handing them such a responsibility seems like one of the dumbest things you could do.

As a dam ages, it incurs damages.

I'm from Zambia and you did a good job talking about the Kariba. In our history class, this relocation is painting in a really positive light, it's just later on in life that I found out it was pretty much compulsory... it was more a command and not an option.

I've personally lived in Michigan my whole life and was one of the people who had to evacuate due to the Edenville and Sanford dams flooding so to hear Sam's voice narrate this story of my hometown is surreal, great content as always!

That edenville dam was less that 2 miles away from my Uncle's house, but thankfully they were uphill and didn't get flooded. The more worrying part was that it flooded the local chemical plant, which possibly lead to contamination down river

Ninety-one-THOUSAND? Damn, that’s a lot of dams! 😳🤯😮

You’re telling me beavers built these

11:03 “Photography is strictly prohibited” … pans to the left haha 😂

We just had a dam blown up by russia in Nova Kakhovka 3 months ago, and that force of water is absolutely deadly, even in ways you don't usually think of. Even now, 300 km from the dam in Odesa you can't go swimming because of all the sewage, dead cattle, cats, dogs, fish that was carried right to the sea. No one knows how many people died in total as there are no authorities on the east bank to count the dead...

Dams should be treated much like nuclear plants in the way they shut down. If an operators license is revoked then they should immediately begin draining water levels and decommissioning the damns. Unfortunately everyone wants to squeeze every last penny and eventually it will cost life downstream.

I was hoping to see a mention of the Mullaperiyar dam, a 128 year old gravity dam in a seismically active region of southern India. It was made out of surkhi ( a mix of limestone, burnt bricks, calcium oxide and sugar. Yes, you read that right). Its still standing because of the exact reason mentioned in the video - complacency of the authorities and political foul play. Its the definition of a ticking time bomb endangering thousands of people living downstream.

My grandmother lived on a canal off Wixom lake. She fortunately moved a few years prior to the break. Spent MANY summers on a pontoon boat cruising the lake. Many 4th of July shows anchored off with many others watching a 360 show. Times spent buying candy and pop at the marina. There was even a restaurant where you could dock at and get pizza, never actually went inside it because my uncle was a paraplegic so we just got a pickup order and ate it at the dock. There was a small long island where people would anchor off of and go swimming. That was super cool to explore, a lot of driftwood and vegetation which housed all sorts of small creatures and other things which for a young curious boy was absolutely amazing. Met a lot of wonderful people out there too. Edith was an old women who loved going out on her little boat and going fishing; she also had a lovely garden. Grandma once drove her lawnmower into that canal taking out a few year old sapling. She wasn't allowed to mow the grass after that.

I was born and raised in Midland Michigan and I was in Midland during that dam burst and it was crazy. My side of the town didn't end up getting flooded but the side of town that my highschool (dow highschool) was on got completely ruined. I had multiple buddies who had parts of their houses completely destroyed. I still have video on snapchat of me going into my school after the flood and seeing my highschool pool, the library, and multiple classrooms destroyed. Crazy ass times.

Minor note on precipitation unit conversions: While centimeters are usually the more common measurement in metric, in the case of precipitation, millimeters are the standard. So 3 inches would become 76 millimeters (well, assuming it's _exactly_ 3 inches).

I grew up in Sanford, so starting this video and seeing Wixom Lake immediately had my attention. I vividly remember the day the alerts went out that the dam was going to fail. Literally my childhood nightmare, having lived across from the Sanford Lake dam my entire childhood. It’s still so weird seeing those lakes today, or at least where they used to be. Just rivers now and completely overgrown, with boats still stranded in the dirt.

The fact that private entities can build these dams then essentially just abandon them once they stop being profitable is absolutely batshit insane. Profits are down, so this entire community can now live in increasing risk of being flooded out and drowned.

We also had 2 recent tragic damn incidents in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Hundreds dead and thousands impacted. Mining companies seem to be finally changing their policies to do better risk mitigation

It's weird how scared people are of nuclear power when dams are so much more dangerous but barely anyone has a problem with them. The recent tragic events in Derna horribly demonstrated this, as more people died there than nuclear power has ever killed. It seems like only every few months there's some incredibly dangerous dam failure or something similar, but when was the last time an exploding nuclear power plant was a legitimate concern?

Wendover Pixies & Elves you have to mention how the 3 Gorges Dam has made the Earth even more of a Oblate Spheroid and slowed the spin by 6 microseconds a day. And that is just one Dam let alone all the rest in the Northern Hemisphere.

Excellent coverage! Thank you for drawing attention to this looming issue. It's a national issue that triggers local tragedies. And must involve local remedies. Hard subject to cover. Good job!

I have immediate family who live directly across from the Edenville dam. I remember staying up late that night texting / calling them after the evacuation notice was given. It was one of those real-world instances of “what would you take with you in an emergency?” They were fortunate enough to be unaffected by the flood but many others were not so lucky and that summer we (the communities of Edenville / Sanford / Midland) spent our time working through the cleanup process. Seeing how everyone pulled together (especially the flood victims) and went out of their way to help others was very impactful and humbling. I’m glad that this and other dam disasters are receiving more publicity thanks to your video; keep up the good work.

When the TVA was established by FDR, a whole chain of Dams were constructed in my area. They actually used airplanes to survey the land and find the best geographical place to build it. Dad found a lot of those photos online, and scarily, the place I live now, my family’s home and only property for generations, was among the areas photographed. I still live here, since my area wasn’t chosen for flooding, but to think that my family could’ve been ousted from where they lived on a whim and forced to relocate; property is a major source of generational wealth, and it’s just plain peace of mind and stability, knowing that your descendants will always have a place to live, so the fact that all of that could’ve been taken from them, and was taken from so many people in my area, is really scary. One of the places that was flooded was an old logging town, and one of the only parts of the town that survives now is the graveyard. It’s on a big island in a lake now, and families yearly take a ferry ride and a long, multi-hour hike just to visit the graves of their ancestors. Obviously dams aren’t all bad. One of the ones in my area was built during WWII to supply power to an aircraft factory that was being built alongside it. The amount of good that they’ve done cannot be overlooked or ignored, but I think that, as for any nuanced, well-rounded analysis of history, the amount of bad they did, or if you want to think of it in another way, the amount of sacrifices made for the greater good, has to be mentioned and recognized as well.

My dad always said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers slogan was "the public be dammed."

When I was a kid, I read about a famous dam collapse that killed a bunch of people who'd built their homes below the dam. That convinced me that anyone who does decide to live in such a place (or on a flood plain) are just asking for a terrifying manner of death. I like the fact that my house sits a good bit higher than the streets around it...and that it allows my yard to have excellent drainage, so it's never too soggy. Not that it floods in my immediate area anymore--they spent a bunch of money improving the storm sewers in this part of town, and added a couple of reservoirs in the areas most prone to flooding. I think too many people don't consider such things when choosing a home site.

Not only people were displaced when Lake Kariba formed, but a lot of wildlife as well. Some of the animals had to be tranquilised then moved on barges or boats to higher ground as the water level rose.

dam, that’s crazy

Great video. You could also mention mining dams, which are even a bigger problem and especially in Brazil, where they are responsible for two of the country's worst human and environmental disasters

I live close to the Vickery Creek dam in Roswell, GA. It was built so that a large portion of the creek's flow could be diverted into a flume that powered two textile factories. Textile factories that went up in smoke as Sherman's "March to the Sea" rolled through Roswell. Today there's a very nice park around the land where trails take you to both sides of the waterfall. Every time I visit I think about how it was originally built 170 years ago and hasn't been maintained since 1926 when another company that was using it after the Civil War shut down. Apparently it's safe enough to build a well-traveled park around it, but the way things work here in Georgia it wouldn't surprise me to learn that safety rating comes about after greasing the right palms.

7:18 The real question here is whether or not Hannah accepted the proposal to go to the prom 😂😅

12:31 i like the way battery storage is cut out of solar or wind calculations and placed in a high price tag column to the left making solar and wind far more cost attractive then it really is.

As a Libyan and a volunteer in the town of Derna, I cannot express how the damage that was caused is beyond belief. 2 dams collapsed simultaneously during the the passing of hurricane Daniel and thousands either missing, dead and even more than 70% of the unfortunate population lost their homes.

I knew about Edenville and Oroville because of Practical Engineering. Grady did interesting videos on the dam failures.

I love how the clip at 3:16 has some Canadian geese just waddling around like they own the place (though I imagine they're quite confused as where did the "Lake" go?)

I'm glad you mentioned my country Zambia 🇿🇲. I'm a big fan. Please consider making a video about poaching, in Zambia Rhinos were hunted to extinction. Efforts to repopulate have been very difficult

overwhelmingly the biggest problem is that the majority of these dams are privately owned (and have been for decades). This means private companies got to take all profits when the dams were in good health and now the government (the taxpayer) will have to step in and pay to fix all the issues private corps let happen

The true killer of mega infrastructure: unforseen unprofitability

2:58 Wixom Lake seemed really familiar right from the beginning, and I couldn't quite place where I knew it from, until I saw that clip and remembered it was from when Practical Engineering talked about it

6:45 this map is interesting, in Washington State there must be a bunch of latitudes rounded to integers.

One really lovely dam story is the Elwha River in Washington. It was old and falling apart, and more importantly, it disrupted a major salmon river. It was torn down several years ago, and the river ecosystem has come back in a truly amazing way.

Great timing on this popping up in my feed as just yesterday, an emergency alert was sent out for a dam nearby to me potentially failing. Holds back a small lake here in Southern Utah, so now we wait and see

I grew up in Midland and I’ll never forget the SOS alarms going off on my phone when the edenville dam collapsed. My family thankfully didn’t have to evacuate (the evacuation order stopped on the next street over) but I know some people who lost a ton of things. My school was massively damaged by the floods. Definitely a scary moment fs

Thank you for bringing this issue to your huge base of followers. It's something that I've been getting more and more stressed out and angry over for years now. I'm glad that more people are getting the picture of what could, and will, happen if nothing changes - *FAST* as all hell!

Brilliantly presented. Thank you.

Exceptionally well researched as always, thanks!

I lived downstream of the Wixom lake for 8 years, without realizing that my house was potentially at risk from the south. I thought of that direction as being flat, but higher, and any flood risk coming from the other side. Since to the north we sat 10 feet higher than the highway, no worries. But if things had got more extreme during the failure, there could have been water spread out all over Homer township in Midland county where I lived at that time. Fortunately for those residents, the flood stayed close to the river there, while downtown Midland was completely flooded.

Grew up in Washington state which gets 91% of its electricity from hydro. The lack of conversation around maintaining the dams was astonishing.

I always love the photographs of "photography is prohibited" signs.

They have been working on Kariba dam for a few years already and still have some years left. The work needed is immense and there will be on going work after it is finished. If Kariba dam collapses it will be an unpresidented disaster. A tsunami-like wall of water would rip through the Zambezi valley, reaching the Mozambique border within eight hours. The torrent would overwhelm Mozambique's Cahora Bassa Dam and knock out 40% of southern Africa's hydroelectric capacity. It is estimated there would be consequences for Astralia and islands in between.

Bluewater dam in new mexico has a huge chunk out the face and several cracks across it. I went hiking in the valley last year and periodically google it to see if it collapsed yet

My grandparents had a cottage on wixom lake, crazy to see this on wendover. I had to go up there and throw everything into a giant dumpster. We then walked the lakebed. Pretty wild experience for a place I had been going every summer my whole life. Not to mention this was right after the start of covid, too.

This is an excellent, timely video. Well done sir!

I went to the grand coulee dam for a tour from school. It is an insanely large and impressive structure. Scary to imagine what happens when the giant dams fail

The founder of Boy Scouts of America was not just Boyce, you are forgetting Baden Powell, and Daniel Beard

Dam removal is often cheaper than repairing a dam but runs into the issue off all the people who have built around the lake behind the dam and from operators who want to extract that last bit of irrigation or power "for free" since they expect to be gone before the cost of repair or failure happens.

You should have mentioned the cases of "Mariana" and "Brumadinho" in Brazil, Mining dams that suffer a similar process than that of the video but the consequences are still being felt decades later, and the environmental tragedy at the time was compared to a chernobil as killed and entire river for good

There are several dams along the tittabawasee river at that section. I believe their was a smaller dam up river named the Smallwood dam that was over ran the night before which led to edenville becoming unstable the following day. But also the owner was very negligent. From what I hear, the owner had received some funds for repairs, but instead elected to spend the money on developing the area around the dam to make a venue for playing music.

Practical Engineering has some great videos on both those failed dams

There were four dam failures that day. The secord dam failed first, leading to a small lake of water flowing into smallwood lake, which made that dam fail, so then two lakes worth of water spilled into wixom lake, causing that dam to fail, then three lakes worth of water flowed into sanford lake, causing sanford dam to fail.

Once again, shareholder profits are the cause of the evil in this world.

I live above a dam where our creek feeds into the backend of a big lake. I’m about 5 miles from the overlook. Every time we get heavy rains, I always worry about all the people living below the dam … Where I’m at, we’re usually pretty good because the dam can relieve a lot of our flood waters here with controlled releases, but the people below it really got the shit end of the stick with location. In the fall and winter months when the lake is drained, with enough rain, it can and will fill up quick from all the runoff coming down the mountains and little holler creeks feeding into the main creek. It can cause the areas above the dam to back up quick, the flooding will start to spill out in various directions along creeks, and all that water backing up in the dam can put a lot of pressure onto it if they don’t release some it. The people below the damn are already receiving large amounts of rainfall like we are above it, so their creeks are already high, too. Those controlled releases can make their waters rise even more and cause a catastrophe if they’re not cautious… But without them doing that, we’d flood off quick above the dam from all the creeks backing up into the into the lake and causing a lot of pressure, which could potentially become a disaster on those living below the dam, as well, if it’s not taken care of ASAP during floods. It’s one of those “this way is shit, and this way is also shit but with a bit less runny messes” types of things. It’s actually pretty cool to see how they deal with it and watching all the flood waters come out when those moments arise as it’s just roaring out in large quantities, but man, do I feel for anyone living below it. The constant thought about whether or not you’ll flood off during heavy rainfall if the controlled releases aren’t done right on top of a potential burst is enough to keep me up at night if I lived below one. In fact, it’s something many in the town think is bound to happen someday soon. It’s always “only a matter of time before those repairs just can’t be repaired anymore…” and that’s scary. The amount of water that will burst out through that dam and wash away so many … ugh. See: the Buffalo Creek disaster here in WV back in ‘72. Despite it being half a century ago, it is still fresh in peoples’ minds here in the southern portion of the state solely because of how close to home it hit for many with the amount of damage it caused along with someone knowing someone that lost a loved one. Truly terrifying images and videos that came from it, and some of the stories I’ve heard from people that experienced it firsthand can help fuel nightmares. Just a big wall of black sludgy water coming right at them. Godspeed to those that live below one.

For a short period of time I lived in an apartment adjacent to a river. When I moved in, the dock and stuff was way out of the water, so I assumed it was just low due to it being the summer. I asked around and as it turns out the dam holding the river back failed. It was built quite some time ago, and while it was small enough that it wasn't disastrous, it does make a great example of our aging infrastructure.

Like most infrastructure, Dams effectiveness is dependent are where they are built. During the Dam boom, they looked at earlier dams to get an idea of their effectiveness. However, those early dams had been built in the best spots people could find, and the spots that remained were of lesser quality and hence made for less effective dams. The rush to build kept people from doing deep investigations, only doing surface level comparisons.

Thank you for the great video! Where do we go to find the list of most at risk dams? Where are the links to the sources for your maps? I would imagine that public awareness of the dams in their area, and their condition/age, could provide some useful public pressure on local authorities and the companies that have the responsibility to maintain them.

Video is very informative.Thank you for bringing this issue to your huge base of followers.

The Government should be able to seize a dam from private entities if they are not willing to or able to maintain it.

As a geotechnical engineer, I really appreaciate this video.

I watch a lot of dam videos and this has been one of the best dam videos I’ve ever seen.

Depressingly timely video

Didn't name the video "the Damming danger of dams" or "The Dangerous Dam Disaster" 0/10

"inevitability of fatality" that phrase hits hard

*”Where can I get dam bait?”* -Cousin Eddie, _Vegas Vacation_

Nearly direct after the dam collaps in Lybia

Depressing but informative as always, Mr. Wendover

Eye-opening video! Curious about the engineering solutions and innovations that can address the issues with dams while balancing the need for water. Any thoughts?

the old people dam building footage is incredible

saint frances dam. broke in the dead of night and those that lived down stream didnt even know a dam was built. and the death toll was unknowable.

noticed a few of those dots near me in massachusetts, and i know for a fact i live within walking distance (uphill) of a "significant hazard" dam. heard lots of talk over recent years of finally getting around to dealing with them, but it can't come soon enough tbh

Dam i didnot expect that great video as always wendall productions i will always watch your videos i think they're great and informative and will always watch them within the first 24 to 30 hours after you post it usually but maybe a little longer if im like really busy or my internets not working which is really annoying!!

Thesis: We're hurtling towards the abyss baby!

I'm surprised how close you were on with the pronunciation of Tittabawasee 😂

Love your perspectives, so informative and factual.

I live in Saginaw right where this happened. I remember driving 5min to see the river and seeing it had submerged an entire park I used to walk in. It is weird now driving by Sanford lake and it is entirely empty.

Dam that was informative

I drive by Wixom Lake on I-75 all the time, and I've always wondered what the full story was. It's crazy seeing a "lake" just drained like that.

Very informative video, you did a really good job on it!

Where can i find a list of those 400-odd dams with the fatal combination of unsatisfactory rating & likely loss of life?

How about "The logistics of Dams", would probably be quite interesting

This video is so “dam” good

This video was so good, I had to watch it twice. To summarize the key points: 1. Static liquefaction was the cause of the "freak accident" failure in Michigan 2. However, that dam had inadequate spillway capacity. If the private owners had complied with the regulatory requirements, the dam would never had been subjected to the degree of stress needed for static liquefaction. 3. Spillways are critical to all dams, because dams are vulnerable to spill-over events. 4. Many dams are just getting old, and potentially at risk of just cracking and failing (whether the have an adequate spillway or otherwise). The 1960s boom in Dam construction has created the current surge of dams reaching the end of their intended lifespans. 5. The artificial reservoir displaces massive living spaces for human communities and animal habitats (and plants). 6. Artificial reservoirs also generate lots of methane 7. For this reason, the World Bank advised against dam development. 8. As Climate Change continues, sudden storms will be more frequent and severe, escalating the needs for safe adequate spillways. 9. The 2017 Orville Dam faced a terrifying situation where its spillway (supposedly with adequate capacity) actually broke apart, leading to water exposure to the foundations of the dam itself. This could have been a catastrophic failure. 10. Fundamentally, every large dam holds back an enormous amount of gravitational potential energy. Any failure has a tremendous destructive power to any person/animal/thing downstream. Complacent people can wrongly assume the new landscape represents the "natural" state of existence.

I lived (and my parents still own the house) in the first property south of Edenville dam, immediately south of the west spillway. My parents and I were evacuated the night before at around midnight, but came back the following afternoon to grab some stuff for an extended stay away from home because we were told it was unlikely the dam would collapse at that point due to overtopping. I was there at the house, only about 300 yards from the western spill way when it failed. We were the last ones across the bridge to the south of the dam before it was washed out. Our house was one of the few that did not sustain damage because we were on the west side and it collapsed on the east side and just high enough to evade the rising waters. But the house was not accessible--except by 4 wheeling through the dried up tobacco river bed--for the next six months after the collapse. We were incredibly lucky as most people in Edenville and Sanford lost their homes, or at least got major damage. Of course, this was also in the middle of COVID so we were shortly exposed through a family member we evacuated to stay with and had to quarantine for 2 weeks. Miserable times. So thanks for raising awareness about this issue, when these things fail it is very destructive. We were extremely lucky nobody died.

This whole episode was a flashback to my childhood when my grandparents, who's house is built near a river, flooded due to a dam collapse. Fortunately, as far as I remember nobody died in the process, but millions in collective property damage occurred and more importantly to us a significant loss of childhood memories and family heirlooms were lost as the basement was washed out. It took years for the replacement to be built because the state refused to fund it even though it was causing significant damage to the environment around it. Even now The replacement has drastically changed the shoreline and the quality of aquatic life due to the years the river spent drained.

Cool, a Michigan Video Opener! You’ve made a happy Michigander!