Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/mosul-dam-engineers-warn-it-could-fail-at-any-time-killing-1m-people

by larrymcp • 10 years ago

522 247 10 years ago

zazen• 10 years ago

The article says the Iraqi government has hired an Italian contractor to reinforce and maintain the dam. This presumably makes the massive-disaster scenario described in the Guardian's rather clickbaity headline somewhat less likely.

Edit: fair enough, it might not be as simple as just hiring some engineers to fix it; I hadn't considered the location. But still: when the news event that happened yesterday is that some engineers were hired to fix the dam, I think it's a bit disingenuous to therefore run a story with a headline saying "dam on brink of collapse, may kill one million."

moonshinefe• 10 years ago

Not necessarily. Mosul is ISIS's stronghold and what happens if they don't take too kindly to the 450 Italian troops + workers over there working on the dam that's next to their main city?

It seems quite against their self-interests to stop the work, but you never know with this level of crazy.

bgilroy26• 10 years ago

They ought to be able to finance the project by borrowing against the proceeds of the movie they make about the whole ordeal

Vespasian• 10 years ago

Fighting with heavy weaponry (such as artillery) around the dam is probably not in their interest either (potentially flooding their 'capital').

Shells tend to have a negative effect on structural stability.

On the the other hand obviously while they were holding the dam it was apparently free for all machinery looting season, which is not to clever if you plan to establish your headquarter downstream.

afarrell2• 10 years ago

The problem is that the Italian contractor refuses to work unless the Italian army is allowed to send a unit to defend them. Last I'd heard, the Iraqi government is withholding their approval for this.

spacecowboy_lon• 10 years ago

And the problem of getting workforce and the required plant to the location in the middle of a low level civil war.

mercurial• 10 years ago

Considering the propension of the Iraqi military to run away when faced with ill-equipped, outnumbered opponents, I can't blame the contractor.

sentenza• 10 years ago

Drain it. Seriously.

Any other response is either unrealistically expensive/complicated or reckless.

Sure, the Italian company could maintain it if they aren't attacked by ISIS, but that is a big if when failure is immanent.

bjackman• 10 years ago

Remember that the sluice gates are seized. Obviously they should still drain it but it's not as simple as making the call.

foota5• 10 years ago

How could they drain it?

rwallace3• 10 years ago

Would it suffice to just take a stick of dynamite to one of the seized gates?

masklinn2• 10 years ago

Drain it. Seriously.

Easy to say when the sluice gates are stuck and the dam represents more than 10% of the country's already way under demand electricity production.

afarrell2• 10 years ago

Where is that electricity going? Mosul?

If it is, then shutting it down would cut off an enemy's economic resources and force them to choose between an angry population and attacking a fortified position against air superiority.

Yes, being without electricity does great harm to the civilian population, but less harm than a massacre-by-flood.

throw7• 10 years ago

Well, immediately getting back to grouting the base would be the first order of business. Second, fixing the jammed sluice gate. We need an analysis and timeline of the above and time is something it seems we don't have.

foota5• 10 years ago

This picture on wikipedia of the dam has a really beautiful contrast between the water and the land around it (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Mo...) Also draws attention to the fact that there's a massive amount of water behind the dam.

edit: wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam, to save you the effort of googling :)

autopov• 10 years ago

For more context, at just over 11 cubic km it's roughly twice as large as Shasta Lake[0]—California's largest reservoir.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasta_Lake#/media/File%3A65...

LoSboccacc• 10 years ago

formerly known as Saddam Dam

such an opportunity lost to call it SadDam

StavrosK• 10 years ago

:( Damn.

boothead• 10 years ago

Hussien they didn't think of that?

acqq8• 10 years ago

Any satellite view gives you even better idea about the amount of the water and the danger for Mosul:

http://i.imgur.com/Fg847Xe.jpg

And for the size, even when you see the whole Mediterranean, the lake is still visible (on the right)!

http://i.imgur.com/5ktcQEr.jpg

The areas affected in Mosul, the location of other cities that are affected and the structure of the dam are successfully presented in the Guardian's article:

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2016/03/mosuld...

wooter• 10 years ago

i just want to point out that the fail-safe was abandoned due to sanctions against Iraq. I hope people remember things like this when they openly promote sanctions against countries whose leaders we disagree with. We aren't hurting the leaders, we're hurting the citizenry. And we are certainly not bringing them to our side. We are causing real suffering and death of innocent people.

for example, clinton's iraq sanctions were one of osama bin ladens stated justifications:

UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Effects...

jrockway2• 10 years ago

John Oliver did a pretty good piece on infrastructure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8

No politician gets to cut a ribbon with a giant pair of scissors when they fund routine maintenance. So why bother.

ajuc2• 10 years ago

The fix seems easy - do cut the ribbon in such cases.

jrockway2• 10 years ago

That was the thought that went through my mind when I first watched that piece. I think I'm unusually excited by incremental improvement and routine maintenance though.

digi_owl• 10 years ago

You also get this with corporations, as new stuff is filed as an investment while maintenance is under expenses.

ArkyBeagle6• 10 years ago

Accounting practices make everything bizarre.

VeejayRampay• 10 years ago

They should call the Dutch. They're the best at dams.

EDIT: Retrospectively, my comment is not necessarily appropriate. As much as the Dutch are good at building dams, it's obvious that the situation is dire and has more to do with security and military conflict. My apologies for being insensitive.

BetaCygni• 10 years ago

We're very good at dikes. We don't have much practice with hydroelectric dams though ;)

brohee2• 10 years ago

Iraq was altogether a different country when it was built, but infrastructure that can fail killing 1M people unless maintained 24/7 by a 300 person crew sounds like it has way too many failure scenario for comfort.

AFAIK you can abandon the Hoover dam and it will still be there in 500 years. It looks like the Mosul dam engineers couldn't achieve remotely the same result given the soil it's built on, but there must have been overwhelming reasons to build it despite the risks...

foota5• 10 years ago

Perhaps you meant to say "couldn't achieve..."?

brohee2• 10 years ago

Indeed ;)

x0x02• 10 years ago

My understanding: Russian engineers warned Saddam it could not be built there, but he ordered it done anyway to partially cut off Kurdish rebel movement by creating a lake. See eg

https://web.archive.org/web/20140219214451/http://www.shafaa...

The whole thing is an utter clusterfuck. An American civil engineering prof is saying the sole possible solution is a cutoff wall that, by the way, has to not only be 800 ft below the embankment but is significantly deeper than any other such cutoff wall ever built. And it must be constructed in the middle of Iraq under a dam in serious danger of collapsing.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/03/will-italy-be-able-to-fi...

And finally another interesting article; the alternative to a cutoff wall is building a second $2B dam downstream. There's a good graphic half way down the article of the problems with the Mosul dam. Of course, that's not just $2B but at minimum several years away...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/mosul-dam-engin...

megalodon• 10 years ago

According to your last link, they actually began building a second dam further downstream in the 90s:

A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete.

EDIT: Your last link is the same as the submission.

BWStearns• 10 years ago

Also Iraqi engineers often had to be creative for a lot of Saddam's rule because of sanctions. I say that to add to the "oh shit list" of things not looking good for Mosul, as well as to give due praise for managing to make it work this long despite the challenges x0x0 pointed out.

yourapostasy• 10 years ago

AFAIK you can abandon the Hoover dam and it will still be there in 500 years.

Yes, Hoover dam is quite the civil engineering and project management feat. It's structural lifespan in the absence of maintenance (the turbines will go inoperative in months to years in the absence of maintenance) is estimated in the thousands of years range. [1]

http://zidbits.com/2013/05/how-long-will-the-hoover-dam-last...

daodedickinson• 10 years ago

I never got to the Hoover dam in New Vegas... I wonder how realistically it was depicted.

acqq8• 10 years ago

What's the use in comparing that dam with that another? They have absolutely nothing in common.

If you wanted to know why it's so dangerous, it still doesn't help comparing the dangerous one with your favorite and safe dam.

Earlier news give more context, the Iraq and US official warning, now the former engineers are even more worried than Iraq and US officials who did make explicit warnings, which certainly means it's really critical:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/iraq-us-issue-w...

And the "explanation" is, the decision to build it was from the start political, not guided by the safety concerns:

"The dam, the largest in Iraq, has had structural problems since its construction in the 1980s. The Saddam Hussein regime pressed on with it in the face of warnings from geologists that it was being built on weak, water-soluble rock such as gypsum and anhydrite.

A report by a panel of Iraqi and Swedish geologists and engineers last year described it as “the most dangerous dam in the world”, saying its very construction was a “mystery” in view of the unfavourable geology. Before it was built, the report said, “all the studies expressed a clear concern on the fact that this region suffers from extensive presence of soluble rock formations that might undermine the safety of a high dam of a large reservoir such as Mosul dam.”"

And the safety-increasing project was started even 20 years ago, but the sanctions and the wars were stronger:

"A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete."

viggity• 10 years ago

dude, it sounds like there is nothing that would help the dangerous dam. Nobody thinks that just words are going to help, but learning more about a dams in general (such as the hoover) does illuminate the the issue even if it doesn't help.

x0x02• 10 years ago

There's a paper by some professors at Mosul Univ discussing the dam. Apparently it's built on gypsum and has been patched by continuous filling with cement; the current problems stem from incorrect construction in the 80s.

The professors game out 5 catastrophic failures. They range from a wall of water 25m high that would eventually cover over 50% of Mosul city (high) to a mere 34% of the city (best case.) Maximal water levels would be reached within 6 hours. Reading between the lines, I get the sense there is no serious and/or realistic evacuation plan. Not to mention I think Mosul is ruled by ISIS, so coordination with the Iraqi government and/or external dam repair personnel is presumably limited.

edit: with much of Baghdad itself under 4m water within 3 days after collapse. Which probably allows time for evacuation at least, though that's small comfort.

http://www.iwtc.info/2009_pdf/4-1.pdf

mlonkibjuyhv• 10 years ago

This sounds like biblical history in the making...

mavdi• 10 years ago

Something tells me they want to use the risk of a failing dam as a weapon to pursue Mosul population to rise against ISIS. Or that they just don't care if 1M+ died in an ISIS stronghold.

venomsnake• 10 years ago

I think chances of ISIS themselves blowing it up when pushed away are greater.

Those guys are crazy. Not very competent, but crazy.

tomjen32• 10 years ago

How difficult is it to blow up the dam such that the water rushes out? I mean bombing a place to kill people is easy, but I have no idea if you have to hit specific spots on the dam or whether it is enough to just hit any area.

guard-of-terra• 10 years ago

"pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir"

Do they really have snow worth to speak of in Iraq?

jballanc• 10 years ago

The Mosul dam is on the Tigris river which originates in the Taurus mountains of Turkey. We had a fairly regular winter as far as snowfall goes, but the spring has arrived very early this year.

burfog• 10 years ago

So this is Turkey's fault. They ought to redirect the river into the Black Sea or directly into the Mediterranean Sea. Other solutions are selling it as bottled water (with a suitably high price: buy this water or the children die!) or boiling it off to cool a power plant.

atdt• 10 years ago

The dam was designed by a Swiss firm of consultants and built by a German-Italian consortium in 1984. Water began seeping through in 1986, when it became apparent that the geological issues were worse than the consultants had predicted.

I doubt that this was an innocent failure on their part. There was a huge financial incentive for these firms to find some way to validate this project.

Successive foreign consultants warned about the risk of building this dam on water-soluble bedrock. The risk was not subtle.

The planning documents for this dam should be scrutinized very closely for evidence of omission or manipulation of data, and the firms involved should be investigated. And if they are found culpable, they should participate in the costs of shoring up the dam. They have played a part in this mess.

germanier• 10 years ago

After more than 30 years the statutes of limitations would hinder such investigations.

kwhitefoot• 10 years ago

Really? Details please.

justsaysmthng• 10 years ago

Yes. Maybe there is evidence of manipulation of data , but who will bring the Italian/Swiss/German companies to justice ? Iraq ? US? EU?

This happened 30 years ago, some people might not even be alive..

tudorw2• 10 years ago

30 years is nothing in infrastructure terms, if the companies still have money in the bank, and they are guilty of something then of course they should pay, that's the business they chose to be in!

thomasz2• 10 years ago

I just don't understand why you assume that the risks were not disclosed to the government. In my eyes, it's way more likely that the government decided to go ahead anyway. This was one of Saddam Hussein's prestige projects - telling him that it couldn't be done could've been fatal.

metafunctor• 10 years ago

Isn't that a very good reason for not telling the truth to government?

chris_wot• 10 years ago

If those firms knew if the extreme risks then they should have decided not to accept the work!

I think it's pretty much a given that Sadaam Hussein, even back then, was a dictator who wouldn't necessarily put the safety of his people first.

emodendroket• 10 years ago

While Saddam Hussein may not have been a friend of human rights I doubt he would have had European engineers killed for declining to work on his project.

ethbro3• 10 years ago

So, crazy idea (and completely inapplicable here, because dictatorship). Is there any government in the word that has an empowered "science" branch of government as a check and balance?

I'm not suggesting science is apolitical, but I feel like there's some merit to "We wanted to build a broken dam because {political considerations}, but the {science branch} vetoed it."

Kind of like a Supreme Court, except informed by scientific knowledge rather than law.

dan1234• 10 years ago

Judging by the Wikipedia entry[0], engineers did warn of it and propose a solution, but it would have slowed construction.

Because the dam was constructed on a foundation of soluble gypsum, the engineers recommended the implementation of a grout curtain within the foundation before the superstructure was built. Instead, to speed construction of the dam, engineers installed a grouting gallery that would allow continuous grouting of the dam's foundation in order to promote stability.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam#Instability_and_reme...

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

And of course the backup solution has worked for 30 years, it is only failing now because the war has made the availability of workers and cement scarce. As I read through some of the pages on the this it seems like the "grouting gallery" would eventually have created the seal necessary.

So I get that it was not the choice one would use in hindsight, I can also see how people at the time weren't thinking "Well what happens if the government is overthrown and we're in civil war and can't do the grouting?" No, doubt if that came up someone said "Well if that happens we'll have worse problems than keeping this dam fixed! har har har." (as you can tell I really dislike it when people use that as an excuse for allowing technical debt to be created)

Retric• 10 years ago

It's not necessarily a faulty design. It simply requires maintenance that's not happening just like you car engine needs oil and you need to keep swapping that oil out after a while.

ex: A spent fuel pool is actually really simple and 'safe' just add water and keep cool. That does not mean you can walk away and not touch one for a year and expect everything to be ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool

mckoss• 10 years ago

Yes, but it's not "fail-safe". Building a massive dam above a million person flood plain, that requires continuous aggressive maintenance seems short sighted at best.

carsongross• 10 years ago

This is one reason why "skin in the game" (to use Taleb's phrase) and social solidarity (to use mine) is so important in economic matters.

During my libertarian days, I used to mock the folks that suggested tariffs and favoring local companies in infrastructure projects were good ideas. I now regret giving so little thought to their arguments.

swehner• 10 years ago

Wouldn't this apply to most dams around the world? Designed, constructed by foreigners?

samstave5• 10 years ago

atdt

Now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...

s_q_b3• 10 years ago

I've had six civil engineers tell me that that dam has 6-months at maximum. The odds of collapse within that period ranged from 80-95% in estimates.

_nedR• 10 years ago

When did they tell you this? Just trying to get an accurate time-frame.

Scarblac• 10 years ago

When did they tell you that?

s_q_b3• 10 years ago

A couple days ago, dinner conversation.

arcadeparade• 10 years ago

Is it because of the coming snow melt? Or just time is running out?

s_q_b3• 10 years ago

Unexhaustively: snow melt, fighting season, lack of maintenance.

chippy• 10 years ago

So they were working on fixing this but the west imposed sanctions in the 90s and stopped work.

"There is no permanent solution except building another dam,” Ansari said. A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete."

acqq8• 10 years ago

Not to mention the war in 2003 and everything afterwards, as presented by Bush (even if he hasn't personally developed the plan), it was "to bring democracy" there.

Since the US was effectively for years in charge there, since 2003, theoretically, there was certainly enough time and money to finish the second dam.

salgernon2• 10 years ago

  http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2007/10/god-really-doesnt-like-bush-much.html

The US was trying to provide "aid" in protecting the dam in 2007 - I have no idea if it was taken on as a legitimate project or just wallpaper to say "see how we're helping".

I don't have time for fun conspiracy theories, but I'm sure lines can be traced all around construction of the dam, through the bush family, back to infrastructure, etc.

tome• 10 years ago

Interesting that you can find a way to blame this on the West when Saddam could just have complied with the UN (who imposed the sanctions, not the "West"), had the sactions removed, and given his people a better life.

acqq8• 10 years ago

Actually, the US wanted Saddam away just the same like they wanted Assad away. There was nothing Saddam could do except for allowing the US to take over the whole country and prosecute (and kill) him.

That's why the info about WMD was faked, both by the US and the UK. The UK was extreme, doing copy paste of the works of students from the internet. It's an interesting read.

The UK articles from 2003(!):

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/08/media.openup

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-159314/No-10-admits-...

"The Government was accused of attempting to mislead Parliament and the general public after it emerged a dossier of evidence against Saddam Hussein was largely lifted from a Californian postgraduate student's outdated thesis."

gioele• 10 years ago

This is the bigger version of the Vajont Dam's tragedy of the '60s that killed two thousand people and wrecked an entire province. [1]

At 10:39 P.M., a massive landslide of about 260,000,000 cubic metres (340,000,000 cu yd) of forest, earth, and rock fell into the reservoir at up to 110 kilometres per hour (68 mph), completely filling the narrow reservoir behind the dam. The landslide was complete in just 45 seconds, much faster than predicted, and the resulting displacement of water caused 50,000,000 cubic metres (65,000,000 cu yd) of water to overtop the dam in a 250-metre (820 ft) high wave.
This event occurred when the company and the Italian government dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin, and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.
Numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded, and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it.

and also

On 12 February 2008, while launching the International Year of Planet Earth, UNESCO cited the Vajont Dam tragedy as one of five "cautionary tales", caused by "the failure of engineers and geologists".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

arethuza4• 10 years ago

Except that in the case of the Vajont Dam disaster that dam didn't actually fail and is mostly still there.

ctdonath• 10 years ago

Has/could someone at least set up some cameras recording 24/7 to document the inevitable collapse in detail?

yiyus3• 10 years ago

I am afraid that the amount of vapor would not let us to see too much. But I totally agree, somebody please set up some cameras.

giarc• 10 years ago

It sounds like it will be such a huge event that the camera's will need to be on satellites.

awl130• 10 years ago

this sounds like a job for drones

james_pm• 10 years ago

To give some sense of the scale of the disaster that would follow a failure, the US considered bombing that dam and releasing all that water in response to a potential chemical attack on US troops during Gulf War I, according to Colin Powell (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/script_b.html - search for dams).

TallGuyShort5• 10 years ago

They considered an attack that would have killed ~1M people, presumably mainly civilians? sigh smh

knowaveragejoe3• 10 years ago

To play devil's advocate here, any competent military would consider possibilities like this. "War is hell" is said so often these days as to be blasé, but it really is true.

zanny• 10 years ago

It isn't just about loss of life, the dam constitutes a good chunk of Iraq's power generation. It is still a strategic military target.

krschultz• 10 years ago

Considered means had a study done to see what the effects would be. It doesn't mean that was the preferred strategy.

There are people in the Pentagon considering all kinds of crazy scenarios all the time, so that when crazy actually happens the leaders can make a quick decision based on a briefing book that took a while to put together. It sounds ominous in the press, but it's really innocuous.

mason2402• 10 years ago

They consider everything.

piyushpr134• 10 years ago

Americans lives are worth much more than some stupid Iraqi civilians.

parados• 10 years ago

Customary International Humanitarian Law has something to say about this[0]. The US military has its interpretation of rule 42[1].

[0] https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cha_chapter13...

[1] https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cou_us_rule42

seang• 10 years ago

They also have contingencies for several variants of zombie incursions and the arrival of a hostile sentient AI.

The military considers a lot of things.

mikeash• 10 years ago

The next paragraph mentions nuclear weapons. The context is widespread use of chemical weapons (i.e. WMDs) by the Iraqis, and potential retaliation for that.

yread• 10 years ago

Interesting that Hoover Dam mentioned elsewhere in the thread also had problems with geology of the rocks under it and had to be fixed in a hacky way by additional grouting for 12 years after completion

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/hoover_dam/Grout%20Curtain%20Fa...

alphapapa3• 10 years ago

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

salgernon2• 10 years ago

An article from 2007:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7069109.stm

With a similar conclusion mentions that the water resources minister kept much of the discussions about how to proceed with the dam maintenance out of the public eye to avoid bringing the issues to the attention of insurgents.

acqq8• 10 years ago

That still has nothing to do with the obligations of the US who were in charge of Iraq since 2003.

Salgernon posted the link documenting how much the US engaged (hint: minimally, compared to what was needed to fix the issue):

http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2007/10/god-really-doesnt-l...

jamesfe• 10 years ago

I was a Marine in Iraq from 06-09. We constantly built plans for the inevitable demise of this dam. Mostly just estimates of how screwed people would be.

I'm surprised it's not blown yet, I was constantly worried someone would bomb it somehow, but 7 years later, it's still standing, so I'm unsure about any estimates given now - the Iraqis were fairly liberal in their estimates in 2006 (it'll fall by 2007) and the same predictions followed every year. Of course, they wanted vast quantities of money to fix it (and skim off the top for themselves) so there was some bias.

Check out the Haditha Dam too. Another large body of water held back by aging infrastructure further destroyed by looters who dismantled huge pieces of machinery to sell as scrap for $0.05/lb.

jksmith2• 10 years ago

Surprised that some big infrastructure company like Halli or Bechtel didn't see an opportunity to scheme some business from this.

raisedbyninjas• 10 years ago

Rebuilding Mosul is more lucrative that maintenance on Mosul dam?

ArkyBeagle6• 10 years ago

Some of those guys were severely burned by the Iraqi Adventure. SFAIK, Halli divested of Brown-Root.

Big Engineering like that might as well be politics. And this makes me think of the St. Francis Dam.

"It's Chinatown, Jake."

samstave5• 10 years ago

I'm positive they likely have.

Don't forget the fact that Feinstein's husband was head of a doc at Bechtel Corp and she was on the Military construction Appropriations committee, they funneled a lot of money through that incestuous relationship.

She left that committee in 2008, which was plenty of time for graft.

tdyen2• 10 years ago

Why didn't the failsafe dam get built? It's a perfect big infrastructure project for IMF types to fund?

gambiting• 10 years ago

The work on the failsafe dam has actually started a few years ago but it got only 40% finished due to political tensions. It's not done and it wouldn't be able to hold anything as it currently is.

ryanmarsh• 10 years ago

So many indignant comments here by people who've surely never seen how large construction projects work in third world countries.

Try to keep in mind that the average civil engineer has the same amount of integrity as you do. Maybe more because lives are at stake. How construction projects get green lit in third world countries often follows an unorthodox set of practices far removed from the engineers who are told to "just make it work". Sound familiar?

mratzloff2• 10 years ago

If the dam breaks, ISIS will be judged responsible for more deaths than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maintenance on the dam almost entirely stopped when ISIS took over, and the grouting machines required for maintaining it were looted. And the dead will be Sunni Muslims--their own "citizens", those who didn't flee when ISIS took control of Mosul.

It will be the lasting legacy of ISIS.

Surely this is a factor in the timing of the US-led effort currently underway to retake Mosul from ISIS, backed by the Iraqi Army.

Loughla• 10 years ago

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's not how this will be viewed in a local/regional context. My guess is the local boys just trying to survive won't be seen as the problem when compared to the international imperialists and dictators we seem to be viewed as.

Just a guess, really, but on an international level, we'll know the truth. But, I'm guessing this dam(n) failure will be yet another successful recruiting tool for ISIS and the like.

Anyone with a head for middle-eastern politics and terrorist recruiting tactics around to respond?

ilaksh2• 10 years ago

Don't let anyone blame ISIS. This has been an ongoing issue since the dam was built and the new dam construction stopped because of sanctions. Money should have been available for continuing the new dam. Enough billions were wasted on other projects since the invasion.

Grishnakh15• 10 years ago

You can blame ISIS all you want, but aren't the 1M people who'll be affected by this basically supporters of ISIS? As you said, they're ISIS's own citizens. So basically they're being hoist by their own petard.

Every nation gets the government it deserves.

seren• 10 years ago

Every nation gets the government it deserves.

This is a somewhat radical stance. When an armed group seizes the control of a city, the citizens don't always have the ability to fight back.

There are plenty of people who are risking their lives and have lost it in ISIS control territory, telling them they "deserved" it is really rash.

Let's reverse the point of view and let's take 1M of Americans. Do you think I will find 1M Obama supporter?

You have basically the ISIS stance, if you are living in the West, Muslim or not, you are an enemy and thus you deserve to be blown up.

Grishnakh15• 10 years ago

Do I think you'll find 1M people in America who support Obama's administration? Um, yes... He was elected by about half the population, after all. I can easily find 1M people who still prefer to have him as President. Heck, right now with our current frontrunners, there's people who'd like to have another 4 or 8 years of Obama rather than Trump or Hillary.

Now with Mosul, we're talking about 1M people. That's far, far more than the number of active ISIS fighters and other staff in the city. Have you never heard of guerilla warfare? If a population revolts, there isn't much a poorly-led and ill-trained military force can do to stop them. The people there are not revolting, so they're either cowards or complicit (and likely both). The people always have the ability to fight back, even if it has to be done as a war of attrition (use makeshift weapons to ambush small numbers of ISIS troops). Even in Nazi Germany and occupied France, there were resistance efforts from the local populations. Ever hear of the Maquis? ISIS doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resources and training that the Wehrmacht had in occupied France.

stellar678• 10 years ago

Do you seriously believe that an organization known for publicly beheading people, imposing arbitrary violent pseudo-Islamic rule, cultural genocide, etc... is supported by a significant part of the population of the territory they took over?

The answer is - no, they are not basically supporters of ISIS. A few certainly are, but not many. They're people trapped under the tyrannical rule of strongmen who came to power in a vacuum because ... the people did not have the government they deserve.

Grishnakh15• 10 years ago

They may or may not have the government they want, but they certainly have the government they deserve. Every nation of people does.

If you're not willing to stand up and fight when a tiny number of people is oppressing you, then why do you deserve anything better? Who else is supposed to liberate you? Do you think that you're entitled to having a bunch of foreigners come risk their lives to liberate you from your own people (ISIS is headed by people who are native to the area, they're not foreigners, though many of their fighters are). That sounds like a pretty big entitlement mentality to me.

The power vacuum you talk of only existed because the people in that area allowed it to exist.

And yes, I do believe that a significant part of the population of their territory supports their actions. And no, their ruls is not "pseudo-Islamic", it's Islamic in the truest sense. Go read the Islamic holy books: they're following them to the letter. They're doing Islam correctly, just like every fundamentalist does their religion correctly; everyone else just cherry-picks the parts they like and ignores or whitewashes the really horrible parts.

dang6• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217648 and marked it off-topic.

Grishnakh15• 10 years ago

To add to my prior comment, it seems like expending military resources to retake this area is a waste, since the citizens there support ISIS. Instead of getting soldiers killed fighting to "liberate" people who probably don't want to be liberated, maybe they should have just dropped a bunch of leaflets on Mosul, explaining that the dam isn't being maintained under ISIS control, and without maintenance will fail in a few years, causing a massive flood and killing most of the people in Mosul. So if they want to avoid this, it's up to them to rise up and revolt against ISIS. If they don't, oh well. If you're not willing to fight for your own survival and freedom, then maybe you don't deserve it, and you really have no right to expect others to do the dirty work for you and hand you these things on a silver platter.

dang6• 10 years ago

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217648 and marked it off-topic.

ansible2• 10 years ago

So if they want to avoid this, it's up to them to rise up and revolt against ISIS. If they don't, oh well. If you're not willing to fight for your own survival and freedom, then maybe you don't deserve it, and you really have no right to expect others to do the dirty work for you and hand you these things on a silver platter.

And these people back in 2003 were asking for the USA-led coalition to invade their own country, topple the government, wreck the country's infrastructure, and leave a power-vacuum in its place? A vacuum filled in by local warlords and ethnic-cleansing militias?

I dispute the idea that we in the West have no responsibility here to help.

Grishnakh15• 10 years ago

Unless you're a GOP voter (and not a Trump voter), then it's obvious that in 2003, Iraqis were not asking for their country to be invaded.

However, since we made such a mess of it before, what makes you think we're going to do any better with another invasion and setting up another unpopular government? The people in that region don't like the government we set up because the Shias are too powerful; they want a government like what they had before, where the Sunnis have all the power, and the Shias and Kurds get stomped on. Are you willing to give them that government? If not, you're not going to get their support, and ISIS (or similar) is.

You may claim that the West has a responsibility to help, but I claim that the West cannot help, and that there is no way for us, a bunch of outsiders, to make the situation better. Only the people there can fix the problem for themselves. We cannot do it for them. If we try, we will fail, and they will not appreciate it or agree with our methods.

hypertexthero• 10 years ago

This reminded me of this story in the current issue of The New Yorker <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-man-who-mad...

jayess• 10 years ago

According to the Paul Krugmans and other neo-Keynesians, it would be an economic boon. Imagine all the destruction that would need to be re-built!

Tistel• 10 years ago

Are there any articles about how/why the sluice gates are seized? Is it sediment blocking them? Or did something mechanical break? I would like to hear from an engineer. I know that the US Corps of Engineers has probably been to it during the various wars. I know the overall problem is the porous rock and whole dam collapsing (which is horrible for the locals), I am just curious what the best way to relieve the pressure to buy time.

fapjacks3• 10 years ago

Software engineer here (chuckle). I spent a lot of time in Iraq, some of that time guarding infrastructure. The thing about most of that stuff -- and my guess in this case -- is that the machinery is rusted. The door may be physically jammed by silt or something, as well, but I would put my money on the machinery to open the doors being rusted or otherwise destroyed/removed by looters. This is the case with the vast majority of stuff like that in Iraq: If you weren't standing next to it with a machine gun, someone would carry off the parts to sell for scrap. Or at least nobody would come by to oil the parts and make sure they function properly. The thing with rusting machinery also is something of a cultural/religious phenomena, i.e. "it is the will of Allah" that this equipment is rusting, and therefore I should not perform maintenance on it. The Iraqi Army was hard to train for a number of reasons, but particularly in equipment maintenance for this reason. "Clean your weapon" ... "But it is the will of Allah that it is rusting" ...

utku_karatas2• 10 years ago

"Clean your weapon" ... "But it is the will of Allah that it is rusting"

Oh :)

Not a cultural/religious phenomena. That is just a sarcastic way to ignore someone. This way of passive resistance is kinder (and safer in context) than to outright say "piss off". Everything is considered will of God in Islam anyways - from someone moving a finger to celestial events.

When an Arab tells you "if it's the will of God" or "tomorrow" you are most likely on your own, nothing is going to get done. True for most of the muslims; more true for most of the Arabs. Source: a muslim.

wahsd• 10 years ago

Who cares. It's been known about for decades and predictions of impending disaster made for a dozen years. At this point I don't care one bit what happens to anyone. This is totally and utterly foreseeable. Not my problem. Liquidate your assets and send your donations to Iraq if you want to help; quit trying to whip up the bleeding hearts to spend other people's money.

martinpw• 10 years ago

Here is a 2015 paper with a detailed technical analysis. The first author on this paper is the Iraqi engineer interviewed in this Guardian article.

http://pure.ltu.se/portal/files/102425643/Vol_5_3_8.pdf

dghughes• 10 years ago

It seems to be a lost cause why not break open the jammed sluice gates one at a time to gradually let water through and let off at least some of the pressure? And then just leave them open.

It seems pointless to continually fix a dam with such design flaws and needing constant repair.

ryao• 10 years ago

It sounds like having a dam is riskier than the alternative of not having a dam. Why not try draining the resouvoir and dismantling the dam?

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

For the nearest comparable disaster, look up the Banqiao Dam Failure, occurring in 1975 in China. It resulted in the deaths of 171,000 people in the densly-populated downstream valley.

The circumstances of the failure are themselves instructive. Poor planning, poor design, ignored engineering warnings (and banishment of the engineer in question), inadequate safety presentations, a true monster of a storm (over 1 meter of water in 24 hours), miscommunications, failed communications, no downstream warning system, the inevitable dam failure, and a further cascade of additional dam failures, including many of which were blasted open with artillery.

Only a relatively small number of the deaths were direcectly precipitated by the flooding. Many resulted from disease and starvation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam?wprov=sfla1

The Mosul Dam could potentially dwarf this tragedy.

contravariant• 10 years ago

over 1 meter of water in 24 hours

That's the first time I've seen rain measured in metres instead of millimetres.

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

Well, the official reports were in mm. But there were over a thousand of them.

ilaksh2• 10 years ago

Either do an emergency maintenance now or do a real evacuation.

Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

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