Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
dam. They really were scared. I wasn't involved in that dam, but some of the
people I worked with were. Wendell Johnson, I think, was. But they called all of
the consultants in from all over the world, wherever they were there because it was
nip and tuck just what they had to do to keep that dam. If that dam had washed out,
it would have really taken the whole countryside with it. It's a tremendous dam.
I think it's 400 feet high. For an earth dam, that's high. I don't know how many
thousand feet wide it is. But it`s a tremendous dam.
Later on Harza had a consulting contract with Pakistan to study general flood
problems. They sent me over there for a month or two. I was never quite sure why
they wanted me, but I got interested in some things so I wrote a report on them for
them.
But while I was there I decided, and they approved it, so I flew up to Islamabad,
which was j u s t getting started then. They had started building their buildings and
everything. There was an airport there. That was the nearest airport to Tarbella.
They took me out to the dam, and the engineer there took me on a tour down
through this tunnel that had blown out and everything. I saw the work they were
doing to rebuild it. So that was a little plus. I got to see that dam.
Q ..
What would have caused that to happen, that kind of thing?
A ..
I'm sure I knew once or I knew what they thought had happened. I think somebody
failed to do something that they should have done in operating some gates. It
shouldn't have happened ordinarily anyhow. I mean you have gates on a tunnel, you
should be able to use them.
Q ..
The whole dam, yes.
A ..
An unusual pressure upstream. So it was not only what happened on the tunnels,
but there must have been some weakness in the material on the upstream face. It
blew an awful hole in the upstream face of that dam.
Q ..
Jake Douma did some consulting on some of this.
A
Oh, yes. Later on when they, as they were rebuilding it, they did a number of
things, and Jake made a lot of trips over there. I don't know that he was in
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