NO Flood wall concrete

[unclesyd]

Has anyone noticed the concrete in the failed parts of the flood wall?
I've caught a couple of tight shots and to me it looks like rather poor quality. In one failed section it was cracked over the entire surface of the panel, but it was still holding after the panel was overturned. In two other sections the was only about half of the panel was left with the vertical rebar standing straight, not bent at all after turning over.
There was one segment that showed that panels had raised relief on the upper two feet and a fairly large funeral urn about every five feet.

 

[JedClampett]

I'm curious about the design of these walls, also. I'll bet you'll be reading plenty about their design in the Engineering press as the investigation continues. Sort of like the World Trade Centers.

 

[Slugger926]

Since my sister is a research engineer that will have to inspect them, and already has seen closeup videos of the walls as they failed, I will chime in with what happened.

The water overtopped the walls. If you notice the walls are built on top of earthen berms. The water started eroding the earth berms below the wall until headcut erosion started occuring. Once the headcut happened, erosion happened very fast with the amount of CFS that was flowing at these points.

The headcut erosion started undercutting the foundation of the wall itself until the foundation gave way. It was the berm and the foundation of the wall that caused the walls to fail once high volumes of water were going over the walls.

Also note that these walls were built decades ago, but would have probably failed the same way if they were built 2 years ago. The walls needed a foundation. THe earthen berms and walls needed to be higher and wider for the high volumes of water.

She will be going down there next weekend, then on to a conference in Orlando.