01.22.07
If a Dam Breaks will You be Swamped?
Although there’s some evidence that dams might not be maintained the way you might hope for expected rainfalls (courtesy of MYWAY.com) what will happen to your community if rainfalls increase in intensity during the spring & fall? The National Inventory of Dams gives you an idea of all the dams around you that could fail.  (After you load an annoying but harmless activeX control.) The name links to a page with detailed information on the dam – like the last inspection was in 1945. The presentation is by state with no apparent way to sort the data. It can be copied & pasted into a spreadsheet on your computer. I created a spreadsheet for the Northeast (5.5 M) which I will link to as soon as I figure out how to put it somewhere useful. I sorted by latitude then checked dams to the north & south of me. A Name of river sort is mildly interesting if you want to see how many dams upstream could fail on a major river that crosses state lines.
