maedchenhosen t1_j5f6cpe wrote on January 22, 2023 at 4:02 PM

Reply to comment by SierraVictoriaCharli in TIL that the California St. Francis Dam disaster of 1928, a midnight-hour 120' wave that killed 431 sleeping people and wiped out giant sections of land more than 50 miles west to Ventura, was caused by the dam having been built on a fault zone (in addition to the dam's retention of water). by atrailofdisasters

Thank you! Small veins of gypsum and talc certainly wouldn’t help (and you’re right, talc is slippery and probably worse than gypsum). I’ve been to the site and the schist is clearly very friable at least at the surface. Thanks for expanding my knowledge on the site :)

SierraVictoriaCharli t1_j5rh412 wrote on January 25, 2023 at 1:17 AM

Thank you for sharing your experience of the site; Mastery is running out of ways of making mistakes, the true and best masters learn from others' mistakes. The St. Francis Dam was a wonderful theory. Engineering is the joke; what is the difference between theory and practice? well in theory nothing; now prove it.