Dam Failure

[XXX-er]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...port-1.5747888

actualy there was no failure somehow they turned turned the water on with people still fishing on the Capilano and drowned 2 people, I can see a big lawsuit

I've paddled the Cap, its a narrow canyon if you suddenly got 3 meters of water in there while fishing you would be fucked

[Core Shot]

13:15 - 0.647m @ 1.228 m³/s
13:30 - 1.608m @ 32.087 m³/s
13:45 - 3.315m @ 210.777 m³/s
14:00 - 4.23m @ 413.328 m³/s

Damn!

[bobz]

Whoa. For those of us in the US, that's a surge from around 50 to around 15000 cfs.

[XXX-er]

its all in the artical, i've paddled the Cap were there were literally hundreds of fishermen so one every 10 ft scowling at each other and the paddlers too, I can't imagine just openning the flood gate at random cuz it would kill dozens of fishermen

somebody fucked up

Its a big time rec area, the Cap is about as close to the center of a major city as you can get for paddling or fishing, you cross the lions gate bridge and you are in stanley park & th center of down town vancover

[m2711c]

nothing's changed..... people just have short attention spans and think bad things only happen to other folks.

the dam I work next to has multiple sirens, alarms, lights and a massive booming sound system that can be heard 6-8 blocks away telling of the impending water rise and the fishherman still won't move. every time one of them drown, they add another alarm that is promptly ignored in the pursuit of one more salmon.

[XXX-er]

"" District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little confirmed to CBC Friday no siren went off when the water was released, even though it usually does.

But on Friday, Dobrovolny said there is no alarm on the dam designed to sound when the gate may be raised or lowered despite what people like Hanafin or Little say.

"Not on this dam," he said.

Hanafin said that while he was biking in the area that day, he did notice signs reminding the public about occasional increases in water flow, but said the flow is never as high as he witnessed.

"It's never that much and never without warning, so that was a massive failure," he said. ""

sounds like a massive fuckup to me

[wicked_sick]

Somebody or something fucked up. My money is on human error of some sort, or a chain of unlikely events set in motion by a stupid oversight, miscommunication, or assumption.

It's tragic for the family of the victims, and heartbreaking I'm sure for everyone working on the dam that day. I hope the investigation seeks to finds the root cause, rather than someone to blame.

[XXX-er]

The DFO is largely considered one of Canada's most fucked up dept so they would mosy likley fuck that up

there is actualy a fish hatchery just below the Cleveland dam, I hope there was no damage to that facility. They say there is actulay no sirens or warnings cuz that is not how they do it on the cap, I think they have always openned the dam very slowly so it would imperceptibly rise whereas this was an instant 10ft wall of water in a canyon which would be pretty wild... something fucked up bigtime

I've been on the kannanaskis in Alberta when the river shuts off at 6pm and I think they open it at 6am it used to take about 20 minutes

[neufox47]

The DFO is largely considered one of Canada's most fucked up dept so they would mosy likley fuck that up

there is actualy a fish hatchery just below the Cleveland dam, I hope there was no damage to that facility. They say there is actulay no sirens or warnings cuz that is not how they do it on the cap, I think they have always openned the dam very slowly so it would imperceptibly rise whereas this was an instant 10ft wall of water in a canyon which would be pretty wild... something fucked up bigtime

I've been on the kannanaskis in Alberta when the river shuts off at 6pm and I think they open it at 6am it used to take about 20 minutes

Any hydro engineers want to explain how this works? Obviously the dam didn’t immediately open, but does the deeper faster water basically catch up to the slower water that was released first? Meaning that an opening that takes 1 minute ends up with a wall of water 2 miles down stream?

[ötzi]

There's probably a formula that takes into account flow rates and the friction with the bottom and sides for the first water and the turbulence that arises from that and the effect of that turbulence on the water after that which results in determining a peak depth somewhere downstream. So, I'm betting yes.

[XXX-er]

The water on the Cap goes up and down very slowly its a 91M high dam, a reservoir providing drinking water for the lower mainland they don't generate any hydro electricity


Back in the day a paddler bud went over to compete in rodeo OC1 on the Kan, the night before comp when the water got shut off they wnet into the river bed & changed the wave by piling up rocks & parts of trees, i believe the locals were pissed off cuz they had trained on something else but as buddy pointed out its a new wave for all of us and its better than it was

[Gcooker]

Somebody or something fucked up. My money is on human error of some sort, or a chain of unlikely events set in motion by a stupid oversight, miscommunication, or assumption.

It's tragic for the family of the victims, and heartbreaking I'm sure for everyone working on the dam that day. I hope the investigation seeks to finds the root cause, rather than someone to blame.

This ^^
Sucks for the families of the dead, terrible thing to happen. Also feel awful for the person who inadvertently caused the issue while doing their job. The amount of guilt that person is feeling would be incredible.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Dam

its a big fucking dam

[highangle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Dam

its a big fucking dam

Accident
On October 1, 2020, the dam's spillway gate opened unexpectedly during maintenance, causing water to gush out onto Capilano River. The anglers at the river edge had no warning except the sound of rushing water as the dam has no public alarm system to warn of a water surge. The popular recreation site had many people scrambling to get out of the way while others in safe areas witnessed their rush to escape.[4] The torrent of water killed one person and trapped several park goers within Capilano River Regional Park.[5] While many managed to escape by themselves, four people had to be rescued and at least one person is still missing.[6] The Capilano River's water level rapidly increased by 3.58 metres (11.7 ft), pushing 413 cubic metres (109,000 US gal) of water per second at its recorded peak.[5] These flow rates normally only occur in the winter




<em>

[bobz]

You can see from the graph (OP's link) that they had run the flow way up just about a week earlier. So, not actually unprecedented, at all, for them to run up the flow pretty high.

Difference being that on September 25, it took roughly 8 hours to ramp up the flow from roughly 30 to 340 m3/s (1K to 12K cfs), and that they started the ramp-up at midnight. Whereas the fatal event on October 1 was initiated mid-day, and went from near-zero to above 400 (50ish to 15K cfs) pretty much all at once.

[XXX-er]

yeah I seen that, I thot they reported the newsfactoid in wiki pretty quick,

they been dealing with huge rain/snow events for 50 + years ever since the cleveland dam was built,

somebody or something fucked up and that will come out pretty quick

[XXX-er]

https://globalnews.ca/news/7386270/h...cleveland-dam/

They are admitting human error, apparently it happened 18 yrs ago to a local FN but nobody was killed and nothing was done

Sounds like automation is the problem