Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Taum Sauk Lake Dam Ruptures


The dam at Taum Sauk lake ruptured somehow this morning and is currently sending a 20-25 foot wall of water hurtling down the Black river. The dam is located just to the southeast of Ironton, MO (AKA the Johnson Shut-ins area). Let's all hope that everyone can get out of harm's way down there. Apparently, there have been several instances of vehicles and homes being swept away. There's not a lot of information getting out through the media, but here is an informative article via the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Later Post:
Apparently, the dam recycles water over and over from a manmade reservoir located above the actual hydroelectric dam and it is actually this reservoir that has experienced a significant breach of some kind. Here's a link to a picture of the lake when it's EMPTY, and then an older black and white photo of what the reservoir looks like when it's at capacity, all 90' deep and 1.5 billion gallons of it:


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

amazing! have u heard anything more since? Nicole

Todd said...

Thankfully, no one was severly injured or killed. I recently saw some pictures of the damage that was done and they were incredible. I meant to post them but I forgot to and now can't remember where I saw them.