Hidroituango dam fail emergency

A dam fail does not necessarily mean a total collapse of the dam. A dam fail refers to any unexpected or uncontrolled water flow. Therefore, the recent emergency at the Hidroituango dam in Colombia could be referred as a dam fail.

On May 2018, Colombia faced one of its worse dam fails in history in the Hidroituango hydropower dam construction. Hidroituango hydropower dam is supposed to be the most important hydropower project in Colombia. With a 220 m high dam and 8 turbines it will have an installed capacity of 2 400 MW. On May 2018, some landslides locked some water detour tunnels, thus creating an unexpected fill and unexpected water flows. Dr. Ordoñez from the technical commission expressed his concern about the critical situation. In order to safe the dam, it was necessary to sacrifice the machines room by using it as an emergency spillway.

In this post we present a time frame summary of this event.

April 28^th. Water detour tunnel gets locked due to internal landslide
April 30^th. Water naturally unlocks the tunnel
May 1^st. Another water detour tunnel gets locked due to internal landslide. Water begins to accumulate and to fill the reservoir
May 4^th. Water fills about 50% of reservoir capacity.
May 10^th. It is decided to use the machines room as bypass. Machines room gets flooded.
May 12^th. River flow downstream increases. Some towns are flooded and some bridges collapse
May 16^th. Emergency is declared. Several towns and thousands of people are evacuated. One filtration is reported; there is possibility for a dam break. Emergency works continue.
May 19^th. Dam works reach level 405 masl (target level to use the cofferdam is 410 masl). Although there is hope for reaching the target, rains are forecasted.