No, except most of them were in pretty rugged country. Carlos Ospina, who's still
A
active, I guess he's an associate member, I see him at the meetings of the National
Academy of Engineering. He totally subscribed to the idea of using these maximum
conditions for the spillway design to be sure that the dams would be safe. A lot of
people didn't do that, but he was one that did.
It's an interesting thing. One of his structural consultants was Barry Cooke. A
couple of months ago I got a phone call from him in San Francisco. Dam building
has sort of quieted down in Colombia like it did here. But apparently, they were
going to work on another project, and, at Ospina's request, Barry called me up and
wanted to know whether I was available. I told him I just wouldn't be able to do it.
I had retired and I wouldn't be able to do a good job for them. But I thought that
was real interesting after, I guess it's been ten years or more since, even probably
more than that since I'd done anything for Ospina.
Q ..
That's a nice compliment, though.
Yes, yes. It made me feel good.
A
Q ..
Was there anything about the designs of any of those dams that was different from
the way the Corps would do it, the Bureau of Reclamation?
A
No, I don't think so. A lot of them were concrete, and Ospina was right up on the
top of things. He was active in the International Commission on Large Dams, an
international organization of dam builders that meets periodically. I guess that's
probably where he met, where he got acquainted with Hathaway and Wendell
Johnson. But I don't know of anything--there may have been structural problems,
but I don't recall getting involved in them. He was a great believer in doing
everything right. It was real nice work because quite often we'd go out and visit the
dam sites and see some real rugged country.
Bogota is right at the foothill of the Andes. We had to go up over those to get back
up into the country. There were areas even then where it wasn't safe to go in
Colombia because there were always some rebels. I don't know whether they were
in the drug business then or something else. But there were places that you couldn't
go safely in Colombia thirty years ago.
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