The Desná Dam (locally known as the Burst Dam) was a dam constructed on the Bílá Desná river in the

Jizera Mountains Jizera Mountains (), or Izera Mountains (; ), are part of the Western Sudetes on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland. The range got its name from the Jizera (river), Jizera River, which rises at the southern base of the Smrk (Jizera), ...

, which are in the

Liberec Region Liberec Region () is an administrative unit (Czech language, Czech: ''kraj'') of the Czech Republic, located in the northernmost part of its historical region of Bohemia. It is named after its capital Liberec. The region shares international bor ...

of the Czech Republic. It is known for

bursting Bursting, or burst firing, is an extremely diverse general phenomenon of the activation patterns of neurons in the central nervous system where periods of rapid action potential spiking are followed by quiescent periods much longer than typical in ...

on September 18, 1916, ten months after it was built, which caused the river to flood the nearby town of Desná, killing 67 people and causing hundreds of others to lose their homes. The dam was constructed over a five-year period and was given final approval on November 18, 1915. On September 18 the next year, at around 3:30pm, log workers noticed the first evidence of water leaking through the dam. The dam keeper ordered the reservoir to be drained, but the flow rate continued to increase. At 4:00pm, inhabitants of Desná were warned, and at 4:15pm, the dam burst with 250,000

cubic meters The cubic metre (in Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in American English) is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is ...

of water inside, which swept through the town. The number of fatalities was originally considered to be 62, though in 2016, researcher Dana Nývltová found that court documents from the time showed 65 victims, and that 2 additional victims died later in hospital.

Aftermath

Ing. Karel Podhajský, the senior state supervisor of the dam's construction, committed suicide upon hearing of the dam bursting. In 1925, three other men who had led the dam's construction (Wilhelm Riedel, Ing. August Klamt and Ing. Emil Gebauer) were sentenced to prison, though they were later pardoned in 1929 by President

Tomáš Masaryk Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (7 March 185014 September 1937) was a Czechoslovaks, Czechoslovak statesman, political activist and philosopher who served as the first List of presidents of Czechoslovakia, president of Czechoslovakia from 191 ...

. A court in 1932 acquitted those who had worked on the dam of all charges, and stated that the cause of the collapse was a geological instability that was too deep to detect during construction. A 1996 study by SG Geotechnika a.s. found that the absence of a sufficient geotechnical survey resulted in errors in the project, specifically not taking into account the great strength of the compressible layers below the dam body and their unacceptable permeability, and the excessively large hydraulic gradient of the water. The ruins of the dam are currently a Czech Republic cultural monument and a European Union

Special Area of Conservation A special area of conservation (SAC) is defined in the European Union's Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), also known as the ''Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora''. They are to protect the 220 habitats and ap ...

. A plaque commemorating the tragedy's victims sits at the site.

Gallery

References

{{Reflist Dams completed in 1915 Dams in the Czech Republic Dam failures in Europe 1915 establishments in Austria-Hungary