Show fiarn garfield eia county news e w S A comprehensive chronicle of important special review of happenings designed for or tho th busy worker who does doe not care to read many page for state and world events A few facts fact 04 y power held eld up by great dams california disaster focuses attention on our other great structures now new york once more disaster has haa dramatized the incalculable power that lies iles behind the towering walls walla of our great darns dams and reservoirs impounded by steel and concrete a col clossal force dorco of water relieves man of half his bis burdens burdena with tile effortlessness of the commonplace but when it breaks those bonds it wrecks a destruction st nothing can withstand find and leaves an ugly trail of desolation bays the now mow york times A few weeks ago se severne thousand people were living in a pleasant california valley some of them were ranchers others lived lo in the scattered villages and many worked in the largo large hydroelectric plant several miles below the great new st francis dam rising high into the air above them nt at tho the mouth of tho the san r fran ran canyon they were very proud of that dam because it had brought so BO much prosperity to the region completed less than two years before it was one of the keystones ot of the immense system that brought writer water across the desert to los angeles and stood in tho the front rank of tho the count rys largest dams before dawn on a tuesday nearly three hundred of those people were denu dead the ranches and the or orchards chartis were burled deep in silt an aud foaming water tho the massive hydroelectric plant find been smashed to fragments twelve billion gallons of water taid burst unit great dam like so much cardboard arid and thunder thundering lug down to tile the distant sen sea in a wave feet high carried destruction ou on its crost crest through the whole valley other dams and reservoirs judgment Is withheld by experts until a complete examination tuia tins been made Mo antIme attention Is being centered on tile dams dains and reservoirs throughout the country in california and the west of course this interest Is acute for a great many of the coin coal out thero there are faced with conditions almost identical to those of the country below tho the st francis dam tile the development of hydroelectric power und and tho the necessity fur tion in regions of little rainfall with its eternal promise of making the desert bloon bloom 11 has led to the building of countless duals throughout the die west canyons anti and arroyo arroyos through which it thin brack brackish sh stream of witter water trickles throughout most of tile the year tire impounded and mado made to distribute their torrential torrent lol spring low flow further more the need of directing the flow of dangerously erratic streams has bas also led to tile the building of darns dams on u large scale the outstanding example Is the colorado river and the proposal to build the great boulder dam which la 19 now a subject of nut lonal do de bate Is hedged about with u contus con us ing muss of issues tile the proposed boulder dam alone vails calls fur for u structure more than buo feet high ovice as high as any jilin ever constructed before in any pr part of tile irlia ir lil it would create a luke hike eighty ils miles long holding enough auter to submerge to a depth of one toot an area tile the size of new lamp shire vermont massachusetts connecticut new jersey and the district of coluni columbia bill some great dams dains contrasted to that the dinn dain that recently gliva wily way with such consequences Is the st francis alani was feet feel high with willi a i span of some 00 CUU feet across the ut of the canyon and un udal dional nearly its as long on the spur of the alie hill it had it noi nominal ninal capacity of cubic feet of witter be fore the hejny rains swelled it beyond that tim the exchequer dam lit in northern Is fe feet ec high und and ar deim duquin in idaho la Is to be ba feet high tha fatuous famous itous Kuuse evell liin dam lit in at izetia Is feet high the rhe whole of dum dam engineering Is centered upon making every luin thain us secure us as pos possibly engineers pulpit out nut that a wide margin or safety beyond the greatest calculable strath strain le la allowed several times as li steel nod and concrete its as seems required Itil red Is used and the requirements worl ed out with scientific bused based on long study long before tle tile actual work ot of building the dam begins an tive the study of the locality Is imide the guard of engineers first flip they examine the llie rock arroll tl bam utti tise tin surface for hons they illey study tile the flow und nd volume ot of tile st sti ruin then they go luck back into the thac mccurda und tind out willit whitt the bruge er uge rainfall ratu full lids has been over oer a peri ol 01 al af 3 cairs nothing Is left to chance after this the best type of dam dain for the lie site selected is built it Is ns no neary perfect ns as it call be made it la Is meant to endure indefinitely ly to stand against anything nature can devise usually it does docs but thero there ore are occasional cas ional lonal exceptions such as the recent tragic one there havo been other etim bislis tile the johnstown flood of 1881 when a 11 dam swept wore more 2000 people to their denolis nd deso the country la Is still the most up pulling palling american instance but with I 1 in the past year the breaking of mississippi sis sippi levees and tile the hoods floods in vermont anve shown how flow brittle the walls that men build against water can be there are catastrophes of lesser magnitude in various parts of tile tho united states every year dwarfed to comparative insignificance by the california Ifor rila disaster in tile the same papers which carried first accounts of that devastation there were wera dispatches from wisconsin that a bursting dam had bad inundated a section of that state tile pressure of an ice jam and abnormally high water was ule the cause tho the result was that farms were under water communication commini 0 atlo n was at a standstill and a great deal de nt of damage was done earth type still good instances such buell as tills this one como come periodically from nit all parts of tile the country still the grent great majority of dams continue to stand and do their work unfailingly engineers assert that there need he be no fear that they will foil fall they are more than adequate to nn anny y emergency the best pc possible creations of engineering skill that skill Is being bel 9 extended constantly st men have been building dams according to records for a good many centuries and they have gradually evolved special types for special purposes and sites paradoxically enough the type of dam that was built first the simple pile or of earth in tile the path catl of a st stream Is stilt still considered one of tile the best it Is used in a the waterworks water works system that supplies new york for instance with certain rather important modifications chief of these Is tile the insertion or of an impervious dike usually of concrete in tho the center to prevent seepage in effect one engineer points out 1 water has fins as much trouble sweeping an earth lain dam away na as it does any natural hill these dams are practical only in a shallow valley but impossible in a mountain gorge where either a gravity concrete dam or tin an arch dam tins has to bo be used depending it Is said largely upon the strength of tile the rock foundation and side walls aval available lable arch type trusted the gravity dum rests on a triangular buse below the surface of the stream bed it Is of course also anchored to the side walls the st francis dam was of tills this type ond and it was arched as well for additional addition til safety tho the arch type la Is one of tile the newel gewo developments in dam building and though it la Is still little beyond tile experimental peri perl mental stage it Is held to bo be the most perfect type yet devised unlike most danis dams whether of brick or stone or wood tho the arch dam docs not depend entirely upon weight to hold field back the witter water it Is like a cylinder in appearance its convex side bide till taking 1119 the thrust of the water and passim it on to the lie walls of the canyon it to 18 said that no dam of tills this type has over ever failed around new york city there are a dozen big dama dains one of the greatest of willell Is the ashokan ashokam datti lit in tho the cata Lills some of them impound two or three times its as much water as aa tile tho volume that swept down the gorge ot of tile the canyon of san sail lit in california but their imminence should cause no undue alarm among tile the thousands of people who live below their massive sides according to willlam william W brush who Is chief engineer of the deportment department of water supply mr brush recently painted out that the darlis dams in the croton and kensick watersheds are of the gravity type built to withstand the greatest conceivable cei vable pressure with ease case the dams anre so BO construct constructed eA mr brush said that tho the abutments are extended far into hito the hillsides hill sides to tn minimize tile the danger of seepage around tile the abutments |