Failure of Iraq's Mosul Dam: A Catastrophe Waiting to Happen

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[vonkug]

When you have to ask five nation's worth of engineers to get a yes, and you build it anyway, you get Tacoma Narrows level of comedic stupidity.

[DohTheOpinionator]

I worked with engineers on the rehabilitaion of the dam from 2015 to 2019 at AECOM. My part was small, but I can tell you the effort to stabilize it is a world wide effort. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is very much involved as well as several European countries. I'm proud of the work we did, but still worry it was only to delay the inevitable. This video nails the overarching points dead on. It never should have been built where it is, but now they're married to it.

[Kaltagstar]

You know that your dam isn't great when you have to have a back-up dam for WHEN, not IF, the original dam fails and causes a potentially catastrophic flood and that back up dam isn't even finished.

[Otis]

RIP to all those in the future that perish to this preventable problem that we’ve known about for 40 years.

[johanbergqvist]

35 years ago, I worked with the Badush dam for a small Swedish company that provided the sliding formwork technology for the project, right up to the Kuwait invasion. All design work stopped, and a number of our guys we're held hostage in Mosul for quite some time. It was pre-CAD time, and all construction drawings were made with pen. The "old school" way.😊

[theBlankScroll]

Imagine living all these years in a god awful desert just to drown to death

[TheBinarygenius]

As soon as you said gypsum my jaw dropped, that stuff is super soluble in water. Also I think a couple of bunker busters would take the dam out with ease.

[jzakary]

I was working for an Aid Organization in Iraqi Kurdistan back in 2017, and everyone feared ISIS would blow the Mosul Dam to hinder the allied offensive.

[isousad]

6 years from now when the dam collapses, everyone would be back here in the comment section.

[Haplo-san]

This definetely will happen. If you tell them "we will fix the dam for free" they would ask "sure, but how much you gonna give me?". Welcome to middle-east.

[garymcderp]

So the dam has Chinese workers permanently part of its cement structure because rescuing them would waste time? That’s hardcore.

[richbuckingham]

6:05 "the dam holds nearly 3 cubic meters of water" 🤣

[ignitionfrn]

1:30 - Mid roll ads
3:05 - Chapter 1 - The construction; the history
7:10 - Chapter 2 - The problems
14:20 - Chapter 3 - If the dam breaks

[griffinmckenzie]

"A catastrophe waiting to happen" is an apt description for pretty much everything in Iraq. lmfao

[bsmithhammer]

I'm seriously amazed this rickety old thing hasn't disintegrated (or been intentionally breached) already.

[devos]

pretty sure he didn't mention it but it was a German–Italian consortium who eventually built the dam lead by Hochtief a German construction company, and they wanted to extend the grout deep down but because of the time limits they basically made a giant foundation of grout with the ability to add more grout as time went on. gotta hand it to the Germans even with their hands tied they can build some quality.

[saint-miscreant]

the way that several people dying and being encased within the cement of the dam is just a FOOTNOTE in this whole saga. yikes

[FrankDarrin]

3 cubic meters? How you get 750 megawatts from that little water is beyond me😂😅

[outcastshryft]

Every day I find a new channel narrated by this guy

[martinstallard]

3:00 the construction; the history
7:05 the problems
14:14 if the dam breaks