from the failure of an overfilled Reservoir in California after days of heavy floods to a rare video capturing the exact moment a 95-year-old embankment Dam succumbed to its own weight and a catastrophe in Brazil that struck with almost no warning here are 10 massive Dam failures that were caught on camera Edenville Michigan is a small community on the Eastern banks of the tid Basi River about a mile north of the Town sits or sat the Edenville Dam which blocked the flow of the tid Basi and tobacco rivers to form Wixom Lake we say sat because the dam failed in May of 2020 Heavy Rain pelted the Edenville Dam and surrounding area causing the earn embankments Eastern side to fail catastrophically the influx of water forced residents in Edenville and Sanford to evacuate as water headed Downstream to the Sanford Dam about 10 Mi away one lucky Resident was there to film the moment when the dam initially broke there it goes there it goes there we go there's the rush we can see a little water trickling through the Earth and Dam perhaps that was all our cameraman needed to see to know the dam was about to fail finally the pressure builds to its breaking point and the mud and grass slide forward releasing all the water a 502 page report written by independent forensics team blamed the failure and damage on the original construction and Decades of poor management had those in charge acted differently they could have prevented the dam from bursting basically the people who built the nearly 100-year-old Dam took a bunch of shortcuts back in the 1920s classic bradu is a municipality in Southeastern Brazil home to just over 40,000 people it's also home to the Coro DEA iron mine and the site of one of the worst Dam failures in history but instead of holding back water the brumadinho dam was holding back toxic mining byproducts called tailings on January 25th of 2019 the brumadinho dam collapsed without warning a massive mudslide engulfed the Iron Man while the employees Aid lunch it spread for Miles through the forest before reaching the para Opa River stationary camera footage really puts the catastrophe into perspective That's Not Just Another Mountain Side you're looking at the whole thing is a tailing Dam and it's just about to fail the Earth and wall collapses leading to a powerful landslide that wipes out everything in its path mud and debris Cascade over the tree line before making their way towards the mine here you see the wall of debris push its way across the landscape as workers quickly escape the dam was owned and operated by a company called Vil the world's largest producer in Iron ore and nickel they're the same company responsible for another catastrophic failure in Mariana Brazil 4 years prior but we'll touch on that later sadly the brumadinho collapse claimed 270 lives mostly Veil employees who were enjoying their lunch when the dam failed one man Elias nunies made it out alive and sat down with the BBC to recount his harrowing story utarak is a North Indian state that is often referred to as D Bui translating to land of the Gods the nickname comes from the numerous Hindu temples scattered across the area it's also a Himalayan State meaning its people are at the Mountain's Mercy in February of 2021 a glacial Dam burst high in the mountains causing massive amounts of water and debris to rush towards the hydr power workers below several angles from that fateful day show how Mighty the mountains truly are [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] it looks like a group of clouds coming through the valley but that's just dust and debris rising up off the Raging Water the ice cold water rips through the valley and floods the area below perhaps the scariest part is the low ominous hum coming from the Rushing Water a while later the water made its way to a dam in the valley quickly breaking through the reinforced concrete many argued back and forth over what caused the landslide leading to the Dam's failure some blamed climate change and others blamed a domino effect of natural disasters a June study confirmed that a massive Rock and Ice Avalanche caused the failure and subsequent flood experts estimate the Avalanche was about 27 million cubic M of rock and glacial ice the ice melted as it fell which led to the flood there are several Mega projects that sounded great on paper but never saw the light of day the Auburn Coffer d in Auburn California is one of those projects proposed as a way to control flooding on the American River the concept of the Auburn dam was officially born in 1950 it took 18 years for construction to finally get off the ground and it began with a 5. 1 million diversion tunnel to reroute the American river through the mountain side but everything came to a halt in 1975 a 5. 7 magnitude earthquake hit the Sierra Nevada area about 50 Mi North of the Auburn Dam engineers and geologists were concerned that their beloved Dam wouldn't survive a similar earthquake so they put the kabash on the project until they could figure something out by 1979 workers had a foundation and an earn Coffer dam made out of clay sand and soil it seemed as though things were finally starting to get somewhere but unprecedented rainfall in 1986 proved otherwise water quickly filled the Auburn Coffer Dam to the point that it's storage and diversion capacity was exceeded officials fearing a disaster began releasing water from dams Downstream and that's exactly what they got as excess water poured over the dam the loose soil quickly began to erode and while it was designed to do this it happened at a much quicker rate than anyone expected not too long after it first overtopped the erosion had carved its way into the reservoir itself greatly increasing the output rate by 2:30 p.
m. on February 18th nearly half the dam was gone ultimately an even greater tragedy was avoided by the quick thinking of officials to lower the water level of the dam Downstream which was able to hold strong through the disaster the collapse spurred new interest in building a proper Dam but as of 2022 the Auburn Coffer dam is a multi-billion doll Money Pit that probably won't ever be built AA is aung Hungarian city of about 35,000 people it sits in the hills of the bonei mountains and was the sight of a catastrophic tailings Dam failure in October of 2010 the dam held back a sea of boite residue also known as red mud the byproduct of processing boite into aluminum oxide on Monday October 4th of 2010 the Northwestern corner of the dam failed releasing about 1 million cubic met of red mud into nearby towns and Villages red mud is a toxic chemical soup and according to some experts can be radioactive aftermath footage from the dam failure should tell you everything you need to know what looks like an Egyptian plague is what happens when a red mud Dam collapses and floods an unsuspecting Town residents work tirelessly to rid their streets of the toxic sludge but the mud is literally everywhere it stains staircases and even covers someone's dog between 80 and 90 people went to the hospital for chemical Burns and the flood claimed 10 lives across the area the following day authorities shut down production at the plant and ordered them to repair the dam by Wednesday the company chairman said he wanted to resume production over the weekend and the plant reopened on Friday the plant boss and 14 other employees were acquitted on negligence charges in 2016 spurring outrage among the local population Lan is a prefecture level city in Sichuan China near the Dadu and mean rivers over 3 million people live in the city putting it between Chicago and Los Angeles for comparison Lan is also home to the Giant Buddha statue which was carved into the mountain in the 8th century and depicts a massive sitting Buddha but those Central Chinese mountains are highly susceptible to landslides during Heavy Rain that rain also leads to flooding which has worsened in recent years in July of 2019 Road workers ran for their lives when a massive Landslide crashed down the mountain and smashed through the dam below [Applause] now that Dam May hold back plenty of water but there is no stopping all those trees and rocks from breaking through one worker runs as fast as he can while another jumps from his truck to watch the disaster unfold they must have assumed they were safe figuring they'd enjoy the show instead of running from it floods got worse in 2020 and emergency workers in Sichuan Province rushed to save the Giant Buddha statue which was now up to his toes and water The 1,200-year-old Relic hadn't seen water that high since 1949 Saun is a new province in Laos established in December of 2013 before 2013 the area was a hotbed for conflict as the military sought to exploit the indigenous M people for the resources since their incorporation the government and the native people haven't gotten along things got worse on September 11th of 2017 when the Nam a dam burst after days of heavy rain the flood covered farming Fields with mud destroying entire crops that the farmers had just planted some onlookers from a cliff overhead witnessed the water's power that day we can assume the dam failed only moments before muddy water rushes down the river and eventually floods the work site a backo tries to reverse away from danger while two more drivers lay on their horns but their efforts are to little aail as the water quickly washes their cars away leaving them to wait until the flood subsides 2 years after the collapse 60 families affected by the flood were still awaiting compensation 4 years before the brumadinho dam failure in Brazil the same company was responsible for another catastrophic failure at a different tailings Dam in Mariana Brazil on November 5th of 2015 the dam at the iron or mining complex burst releasing 43. 7 million cubic met of toxic tailings the sludge infected the dosy river and eventually traveled 425 Mi through several waterways the sludge even reached the Atlantic Ocean 17 days after the collapse by then the damage was already done left with polluted Water Supplies towns and Villages Up and Down the dosy River were in a humanitarian crisis the downstream Villages of Bento Rodriguez and paracatu deishu took the brunt of the damage with 19 people losing their lives in the flood unfortunately Bento is only accessible via unpaved back roads once they were covered in mud and sludge firefighters couldn't get into the town to rescue anybody the dam was owned by a company called Sam Mar meanwhile samarco is jointly owned by Veil and BHP bin the Australian Mining Company the government brought manslaughter and environmental damage charges against 21 samarco Executives a year later then things got worse when a leaked report from 2013 indicated structural issues with the dam sario is one of the 12 regions that div V usbekistan it sits on the Left Bank of the seir Daria River and is home to over 860,000 people the sear flows 1,400 mi from the kyrgistan mountains and empties out into the ARL sea the sardoba reservoir Dam keeps water inside the reservoir about 922 million cubic M of it and uses it for irrigation in the surrounding farmlands and cotton fields but when the dam failed on May 1st of 2020 all that water spilled out in into the fields causing widespread destruction as far as the northern Kazakhstan border the camera Zooms in on the spot where the sardoba dam failed and we see the water rushing out and flooding the farmlands then some rescue workers Wade through the water as they pass a house that's collapsed from the flood elsewhere the destruction is hard to look at as most homes look like Twisted piles of metal 5 days of severe storms caused one of the walls to collapse and water spilled into the cotton fields near nearby to try and stop the bleeding authorities opened a gate into the gadsky canal the idea was that the water would flow into a series of lakes and wetlands but the water overwhelmed the canal and just made the flooding worse according to uzbekistan's Ministry of Finance it'll cost 1.
