Author: Arthur E. Morgan Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 452
Book Description
Dams and Other Disacters
Author: Arthur E. Morgan Dams and Other Disasters
Author: Arthur E. MorganPublisher: Extending Horizons Books
ISBN: 9780875580944
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
St. Francis Dam Disaster
Author: John NicholsPublisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738520797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136
Book Description
Minutes before midnight on the evening of March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed. The dam's 200-foot concrete wall crumpled, sending billions of gallons of raging flood waters down San Francisquito Canyon, sweeping 54 miles down the Santa Clara River to the sea, and claiming over 450 lives in the disaster. Captured here in over 200 images is a photographic record of the devastation caused by the flood, and the heroic efforts of residents and rescue workers. Built by the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Water Works and Supply, the failure of the St. Francis Dam on its first filling was the greatest American civil engineering failure of the 20th century. Beginning at dawn on the morning after the disaster, stunned local residents picked up their cameras to record the path of destruction, and professional photographers moved in to take images of the washed-out bridges, destroyed homes and buildings, Red Cross workers giving aid, and the massive clean-up that followed. The event was one of the worst disasters in California's history, second only to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.
In the Shadow of the Dam
Author: Elizabeth M. SharpePublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416572643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Early one May morning in 1874, in the hills above Williamsburg, Massachusetts, a reservoir dam suddenly burst, sending an avalanche of water down a narrow river valley lined with factories and farms. In just thirty minutes, the Mill River flood left 139 people dead and 740 homeless -- and a nation wondering how this terrible calamity had happened. In this compelling tale of a man-made disaster peopled with everyday heroes and arrogant scoundrels, Elizabeth Sharpe opens a rare window into industry and village life in nineteenth-century New England, a time when dam failures and other industrial accidents were widespread and laws favored factory owners rather than factory workers. In the Mill Valley, the townsfolk depended upon generally benevolent patriarchs who assured them that the dam was safe, when most people could see that it was not. The story of the Mill River flood is the story of those townsfolk: of George Cheney, the dam keeper whose repeated warnings about leaks in the dam had been ignored by the mill owners; of his wife, Elizabeth, who watched in disbelief as the dam burst open from the bottom; of Isabell Hayden, the mother who saw her young son swept away in the river's torrent; and of Fred Howard, a box maker who spent the days after the flood searching for bodies, burying friends, and waiting to see if the button factory he relied upon for his livelihood would be rebuilt. It is also the story of the well-meaning but overconfident businessmen who built the dam: of Onslow Spelman, the manufacturer who dismissed the dam keeper's flood warning, irrationally insisting that the dam could not break; of Lucius Fenn and Joel Bassett, the engineer and contractor whose roles in the construction of the dam would be questioned during the public inquest into the causes of the flood; of William Skinner, the factory owner who struggled to decide whether or not to rebuild his silk factory in the village that bore his name; and of many others. The flood highlighted class divisions between worker and owner, as well as the disorganized state of professional engineering, then still in its infancy. As the flood exposed the dangers of allowing mill owners -- who were not trained engineers -- to design their own dam, legislation to regulate the building of reservoir dams in Massachusetts was enacted for the first time. Engineers, politicians, and business owners battled over control of the reform measures to prevent similar tragedies, yet saw them continually repeated. In the Shadow of the Dam is the story of an event that reshaped a society. Told through the eyes of villagers like Collins Graves, lauded as a hero for his desperate ride through the valley to warn people of the impending flood, and industrialists like Joel Hayden Jr., entrusted with the responsibility of disaster relief despite his culpability in failing to maintain the leaking dam, In the Shadow of the Dam is a history of our uneasy relationship with industrial progress and a riveting narrative of a tragic disaster in small-town Massachusetts.
Arthur Morgan
Author: Aaron D. PurcellPublisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1621900584
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
On May 19, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the appointment of Arthur Morgan (1879-1975), a water-control engineer and college president from Ohio as the chairman of the newly created Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). With the eyes of the nation focused on the reform and recovery promised by the New Deal, Morgan remained in the national spotlight for much of the 1930s in this thoughtful biography Aaron D. Purcell re-assesses Morgan's long life and career and provides the first detailed account of his post-TVA activities. As Purcell demonstrates, Morgan embraced an alternative types of Progressive Era reform that was rooted in nineteenth-century socialism, an overlooked strain in American political thought. Purcell Pinpoints Morgan's reading of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward while a teenager as a watershed moment in the development of his vision for building modern American society. He recounts Morgan's early successes as an engineer budding Progressive-leader, and educational reformer his presidency of Antioch College, and his revolutionary but contentious tenure at the TVA After his dismissal from the TVA Morgan eventually published over a dozen books, including a biography of Bellamy, while supporting community-building efforts across the globe, Morgan retained many of his late-nineteenth century beliefs, including eugenics, as part of his societal vision. His authoritarian administrative style and moral rigidity limited his ability of attract large numbers to his community-based vision. By presenting Morgan's life and career within the context of the larger social and cultural events of his day, this revealing biographical study offers new insight into the achievements and motivations of an important but historically neglected American reformer. Book jacket.
Pastoral and Monumental
Author: Donald Conrad JacksonPublisher:
ISBN: 9780822944263
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
In Pastoral and Monumental, Donald C. Jackson chronicles America's longtime fascination with dams as represented on picture postcards from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Through over four hundred images, Jackson documents the remarkable transformation of dams and their significance to the environment and culture of America. Initially, dams were portrayed in pastoral settings on postcards that might jokingly proclaim them as “a dam pretty place.” But scenes of flood damage, dam collapses, and other disasters also captured people's attention. Later, images of New Deal projects, such as the Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and Norris Dam, symbolized America's rise from the Great Depression through monumental public works and technological innovation. Jackson relates the practical applications of dams, describing their use in irrigation, navigation, flood control, hydroelectric power, milling, mining, and manufacturing. He chronicles changing construction techniques, from small timber mill dams to those more massive and more critical to a society dependent on instant access to electricity and potable water. Concurrent to the evolution of dam technology, Jackson recounts the rise of a postcard culture that was fueled by advances in printing, photography, lowered postal rates, and America's fascination with visual imagery. In 1910, almost one billion postcards were mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, and for a period of over fifty years, postcards featuring dams were “all the rage.” Whether displaying the charms of an old mill, the aftermath of a devastating flood, or the construction of a colossal gravity dam, these postcards were a testament to how people perceived dams as structures of both beauty and technological power.
The Teton Dam Disaster
Author: Dylan J. McDonaldPublisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 0738548618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
While cameras rolled, the newly completed Teton Dam collapsed shortly before noon on June 5, 1976. The resulting wall of water, 80 billion gallons strong, battered town after town during its three-day rampage through the Upper Snake River Valley in eastern Idaho. Impounding the flood-prone Teton River, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation dam failed during the reservoir's initial fill, ripping homes from foundations, drowning thousands of livestock, and stripping acres of valuable topsoil. Amazingly only 11 lives were lost during the disaster, as most residents heeded the flood warnings. Presenting photographs from local newspapers, archives, museums, historical societies, and witnesses, this book documents the dam's spectacular failure, the tremendous damage, and the Herculean cleanup and rebuilding process following one of the worst engineering disasters of the last 50 years. Today the investigation into why the 305-foot-tall earth-fill dam crumbled-ironically a dam built for flood control-still prompts debate.
Floodpath
Author: Jon WilkmanPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620409178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
"Floodpath attempts to rescue the disaster from obscurity . . . The author captures many heartbreaking stories of survivors . . . The effect is powerful." --The Wall Street Journal Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam, a twenty-story-high concrete structure just fifty miles north of Los Angeles, suddenly collapsed, releasing a devastating flood that roared fifty-four miles to the Pacific Ocean, destroying everything in its path. It was a horrific catastrophe, yet one which today is virtually forgotten. With research gathered over more than two decades, award-winning writer and filmmaker Jon Wilkman revisits the deluge that claimed nearly five hundred lives. A key figure is William Mulholland, the self-taught engineer who created an unprecedented water system, allowing Los Angeles to become America's second largest city, and who was also responsible for the design and construction of the St. Francis Dam. Driven by eyewitness accounts and combining urban history with a life-and-death drama and a technological detective story, Floodpath grippingly reanimates the reality behind L.A. noir fictions like the classic film Chinatown. In an era of climate change, increasing demand on water resources, and a neglected American infrastructure, the tragedy of the St. Francis Dam has never been more relevant.
Dam-break Problems, Solutions and Case Studies
Author: D. De WrachienPublisher: WIT Press
ISBN: 1845641426
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
The aim of the book is to give an up-to-date review on dam-break problems, along with the main theoretical background and the practical aspects involved in dam failures, design of flood defense structures, prevention measures and the environmental social, economic and forensic aspects related to the topic. Moreover, an exhaustive range of laboratory tests and modeling techniques is explored to deal effectively with shock waves and other disasters caused by dam failures. Disaster management refers to programs and strategies designed to prevent, mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from the effects of these phenomena.To manage and minimize these risks, it is necessary to identify hazards and vulnerability by means of a deep knowledge of the causes which drive to dam failures, and to understand the flow propagation process.Knowledge and advanced scientific tools play a role of paramount importance of coping with flooding and other dam-break problems along with capacity building in the context of political and administrative frameworks. All these aspects are featured in the book, which is a comprehensive treaty that covers the most theoretical and advanced aspects of structural and hydraulic engineering, together with the hazard assessment and mitigation measures and the social economic and forensic aspects related to subject.
Dams and Public Safety
Author: Robert B. JansenPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dam safety
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description