St. Francis Dam - Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering - page 131

people were killed, most no doubt unsuspecting as they slept. The official death toll was in excess
of 430, but the actual total is debated to this day.
According to Engineering News-Record, which had long ago established its reputation for accur-
ate and incisive reporting on the failure of structures, it was “the first time in history a high dam of
massive masonry” had failed. The disaster was compared to the Johnstown Flood of 1889, which
had claimed more than two thousand lives and was once considered “the worst in history resulting
from failure of man-made structures.” However, the magazine declared, “the washing out of an old
neglected earth dam was not an engineering tragedy” so much as a case of carefree modifications
and poor maintenance by the hunting and fishing club that had patched an abandoned Pennsylvania
state-canal-system reservoir to make a recreational lake. The failure of the St.
Aftermath of the St. Francis Dam failure
Francis Dam was indeed different, for here it was assumed that the latest engineering materials,
design philosophies, construction techniques, and operational procedures were overseen by an en-
gineer with an impeccable record of success. Mulholland's work was not without critics, but in the
business of holding back vast quantities of water, he had been able to answer their fears. At least in
the minds of those who were in the position to give the go-ahead for such a great project, a concrete
dam built by Mulholland would certainly be stronger than the water that pushed against it. But, as
an editorial in Engineering News-Record put it, “Men have always been in awe of these vast forces,
and often has bitter protest been made against the erection of a dam above populous communit-
ies. In every instance engineering science answered the protest and gave assurance that the waters
would be safely controlled. The destruction of the St. Francis dam challenges that assurance.”
A great failure is the perfect counterexample to a hubristic hypothesis. William Mulholland and
his staff had evidently so gained confidence in their mastery over the great hydraulic forces pent
up behind the successful dams they had built that they began to construct them with less and less