Dam Might Burst

Below is an article from the WBKO-TV web site in Bowling Green...

Dam at Lake Cumberland Leaking ©

The Army Corps of Engineers has discovered a leak beneath Wolf Creek Dam in Russell County. The dam holds up Kentucky's largest lake and could wipe out Burkesville's entire community if it breaks. Engineers say there's only a 15% chance of that happening, but some local residents are taking action to be prepared if it does. "We're in the process of applying for grants for a warning system." Emergency Management teams and fire officials are forming an evacuation and notification plan. They say water would reach the town in three hours, and cover the community in 48 hours. The dam needs work totaling $300 million. Congress will have to approve funding for repairs.
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Below is an excerpt of an article from the Times Journal newspaper in Russell County.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO ©

As part of their preparations for handling any events as the results of the seepage, the COE has been preparing for emergency notification, and what to expect, should a catastrophic failure suddenly happen in the dam.

Zaccola told the gathering that computer simulations were being created to study what the effect would be should the dam suddenly burst. The computer models were run to estimate how long it would take water to rise and how much land it would cover, giving authorities a planning process to prepare emergency notification procedures and where they would need to take place.

The model shown at the meeting was based on the sudden - and almost impossible - failure of a 200-foot wide section of the dam. The model was created with three levels of the lake, which would show the effects if the breech were to occur during an abnormally very high lake level, a mid-level, and a very low lake level as it currently is.

Using the worst-case of a very high lake level, Zaccola described how the water would quickly rise in the river below the dam with a 200-foot-wide breech. The river around Creelsboro, about 8 miles from the dam, would begin to rise about 7 feet per hour, and would be noticeable in the first hour. Within a few hours, it would begin to cover the entire river valley, and would reach its peak in about 29 hours. By then, the depth around Creelsboro would be about half that of the lake itself. It would take about 15 days to recede.

Downstream, the city of Burkesville would begin to see waters rise in 3 hours. The city would be deeply underwater in 12 hours. The peak there would occur about 1.8 days after the breech opened.