Home
> Uncategorized > The Most Dangerous Dam in the world
The Most Dangerous Dam in the world
Please forgive the blatant plagiarism. I saw these article and found it very interesting. The British Base in Iraq is 2 hrs away from this Dam. While work has been done by USACE this could involve an STRE at some point in time. The real danger point is April when the Snow Melt from Turkey hits the reservoir.
I look forward to a discussion on this topic at the Southern Hemisphere PET symposium this weekend.
Categories: Uncategorized
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
That article was even longer than my last blog! But definitely a lot more interesting.
I am pretty certain that the Corps has too little knowledge of dams to be much use in fixing it – I think we will have to leave it to the USACE. Any way, given the damning (sorry for the pun) prognosis I suspect by the time any of us get out to Iraq there will be no more dam, just a very big puddle.
I hope you have everything prepared for the Southern Hemisphere PET symposium this weekend.
PowerPoint done, point brief completed just need to sort out what to wear.
Is there a formal dinner on the Saturday night? If so, thongs and board-shorts are required!
I’m glad you didn’t say t shirt. We don’t want to be too formal.
Singlets?
The dam was on the radar of 170 and the STRE (ME) back in the tail end of 2015. There was talk of sending a PET officer to inspect the dam and update parts of the USACE report on it. That never happened (I was warned off, but sadly never got the call), but there is one notable expert in the Corps (in the AR) who briefed PJHQ on the situation. If I remember right the short version was that the UK didn’t want to get involved incase something went wrong, and the US has a lot more specialists available.
Last I heard there was an Italian firm that had won the contract for the grouting, but that they were unable to get to the site due to safety concerns. However my info is almost a year out of date now. The USACE plan is on the dark side, but it seems that a lot of the information is out in the open (and some of it is common sense). The most critical and immediate action was to lower the water level in the dam, that seemed to be happening early last year. If new readings could be taken from the site and compared to the USACE report figures it would give a good indication of how the situation has deteriorated (or not), and what impact lowering the water level has had – if any.
On a related note, there has also been a fair bit of planning done for evacuation plans should the dam fail.
Great insight. I think it has raised its head again as I was chatting to the CO of 63 Wks Gp about it recently. I don’t think there has been much maintenance on it but I expect the Handover notes shortly.
Ok, some more information on this… The Italians are back and grouting again but, noone knows how much damage has been sustained in their absence. The USACE have fitted remote sensors to the dam so have been able to monitor what is going on remotely.