http://news.independent.co.uk/...
Just when you thought the news from Iraq couldn't get any worse. While attention is focused on the Cheney-Bush manly surge, a large dam is in danger of "imminent collapse." The dam threatens to release a wall of floodwaters onto a city of 1.7 million people. I just imagine King George saying "No one could have predicted that the dam would collapse."
Here's excerpts of the news story from the Independent newspaper in Britain:
"... a devastating disaster is impending in the north of the country, where the wall of a dam holding back the Tigris river north of Mosul city is in danger of imminent collapse. "It could go at any minute," says a senior aid worker who has knowledge of the struggle by US and Iraqi engineers to save the dam. "The potential for disaster is very great."
If the dam does fail, a wall of water will sweep into Mosul, Iraq's third largest city with a population of 1.7 million, 20 miles to the south. Experts say the flood waters could destroy 70 per cent of Mosul and inflict heavy damage 190 miles downstream along the Tigris.
The dam ... has long been known to be in a dangerous condition because of unstable bedrock. ... the state of the two-mile long earthfill dam, which holds back some eight billion cubic metres of water in Iraq's largest reservoir, has recently been deteriorating at ever-increasing speed. According to one source, the chance of a total and immediate failure of the dam is now believed to be "reasonably high" at current water levels and "most certain" within the next few years.
... a US report, obtained separately from the embassy statement, says that "due to fundamental and irreversible flaws existing in the dam's foundation, the US Army Corps of Engineers believes that the safety of the Mosul Dam against a potential catastrophic failure cannot be guaranteed".