Article

2016-02-14 Iraq

Mosul dam could collapse, take Iraq with it

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Posted by Steve White 2016-02-14 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 Ich kann nicht ander

My Life and Hard Times

3. The Day the Dam Broke

My memories of what my family and I went through during the 1913 flood in Ohio I would gladly forget. And yet neither the hardships we endured nor the turmoil and confusion we experienced can alter my feeling toward my native state and city. I am having a fine time now and wish Columbus were here, but if anyone ever wished a city was in hell it was during that frightful and perilous afternoon in 1913 when the dam broke, or, to be more exact, when everybody in town thought that the dam broke. We were both ennobled and demoralized by the experience. Grandfather especially rose to magnificent heights which can never lose their splendor for me, even though his reactions to the flood were based upon a profound misconception; namely, that Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry was the menace we were called upon to face. The only possible means of escape for us was to flee the house, a step which grandfather sternly forbade, brandishing his old army sabre in his hand. "Let the sons -- ------- come!" he roared. Meanwhile hundreds of people were streaming by our house in wild panic, screaming "Go east! Go east!" We had to stun grandfather with the ironing board. Impeded as we were by the inert form of the old gentleman -- he was taller than six feet and weighed almost a hundred and seventy pounds -- we were passed, in the first half-mile, by practically everybody else in the city. Had grandfather not come to, at the corner of Parsons Avenue and Town Street, we would unquestionably have been overtaken and engulfed by the roaring waters -- that is, if there had been any roaring waters. Later, when the panic had died down and people had gone rather sheepishly back to their homes and their offices, minimizing the distances they had run and offering various reasons for running, city engineers pointed out that even if the dam had broken, the water level would not have risen more than two additional inches in the West Side. The West Side was, at the time of the dam scare, under thirty feetof water -- as, indeed, were all Ohio river towns during the great spring floods of twenty years ago. The East Side (where we lived and where all the running occurred) had never been in any danger at all. Only a rise of some ninety-five feet could have caused the flood waters to flow over High Street -- the thoroughfare that divided the east side of town from the west -- and engulf the East Side.

The fact that we were all as safe as kittens under a cookstove did not, however, assuage in the least the fine despair and the grotesque desperation which seized upon the residents of the East Side when the cry spread like a grass fire that the dam had given way. Some of the most dignified, staid, cynical, and clear-thinking men in town abandoned their wives, stenographers, homes, and oflices and ran east. There are few alarms in the world more terrifying than "The dam has broken!" There are few persons capable of stopping to reason when that clarion cry strikes upon their ears, even persons who live in towns no nearer than five hundred miles to a dam.
- See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.nl/2011/01/thurber-tonight-my-life-and-hard-times_09.html#sthash.092422vc.dpuf

Posted by Shipman 2016-02-14 08:08|| 2016-02-14 08:08|| Front Page Top

#2 Where's Noah when you need him?

Posted by Deacon Blues 2016-02-14 10:06|| 2016-02-14 10:06|| Front Page Top

#3 Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources has played down the threat but was persuaded to reopen the lower gates of the dam to relieve some pressure, even though it meant power was restored to the militant-held city farther south.

yet, the Taliban can down a couple pylons and disrupt the Afghan grid on a daily basis

Posted by Frank G 2016-02-14 10:35|| 2016-02-14 10:35|| Front Page Top

#4 Insh'Allah baby. Let the water park go. They should drain the reservoir for safety, but Tater knows best.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2016-02-14 19:09|| 2016-02-14 19:09|| Front Page Top

#5 As per 1960's-1970's Guam Taotamonas + NOstradamus, dare a future Not-a-Pink-Submarine, Not-Captained by-Cary-Grant-or-Tony-Curtis, All/Mostly-Female USN SSN do the same to China's heavily-defended Three Gorges in FutWar.

Both for US Victory + destroying China's control of Asia's fresh = natural potable water???

["DRAGNET" THEME + "SINK THE TIRPITZ/X-CRAFT" here].

"The Past", as the saying goes, "is Prologue".

Posted by JosephMendiola 2016-02-14 19:57|| 2016-02-14 19:57|| Front Page Top

#6 Take iraq with it. Sounds good to me

Posted by chris 2016-02-14 20:06|| 2016-02-14 20:06|| Front Page Top

23:24 JosephMendiola
23:05 JosephMendiola
22:25 Pappy
21:51 Rjschwarz
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20:20 Raj
20:14 JosephMendiola
20:06 chris
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19:57 JosephMendiola
19:47 Betty Hitler2611
19:46 Mullah Richard
19:40 Shipman
19:37 Shipman
19:34 Bright Pebbles
19:31 charger
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19:26 trailing wife
19:25 Shipman
19:22 Shipman