Integrity At The Los Angeles Dam

Integrity, in general, is a trait that is people have that makes them feel whole or at peace with themselves when they tell a story, whether it be fact or fiction. As for in an engineering or professional setting it can mean having moral or right beliefs when working on a project that directly effects the public. Integrity and being ethical are two different things but also go hand in hand when working on a project or proposal for a project. Being ethical is more so one’s own personal morals and not that of what society wants. Integrity is almost like being truthful that people expect you to do the right thing when you design something so that way people won’t be hurt in the long run or even on the short road, because the project may be something
Francis Dam was located in San Fracisquito Canyon around present day Santa Clarita. The dam was built without any indication of being an issue until they increased the total height of the dam. The Los Angeles Water Company was the main group in charge of the dam and all associations that went with the dam. The Los Angeles Water Company decided to increase the height of the dam to increase the amount of water that could be stored, in doing so they added a separate wing wall that went left of the main dam. A couple of years later the Los Angeles Water Company decided to increase the overall height of the dam yet again. When they did increase the height of the dam they did not increase the thickness of the damn at the base. This is where the integrity issue arises, the Los Angeles Water Company and their engineers did not increase the thickness of the wall even though they increased the height. They did all of this knowing there were people and families downstream of the dam. When increasing the height of the dam and not increasing the width along with it one comes into the issue of overturning being a possibility. Another thing that was not looked into was if the soil where the new water height would be going would be sufficient enough to hold itself in place if a several cycles of drawing the water up and down were to occur, rapid drawdown. The engineer that was in charge of the dam had done many dam projects before and thought that this one was no different and all the problems that arose were of no concern to him. This is where he had no integrity towards his work. He also did not think of the families that were downstream of the dam and would really be affected by the dam if it were to break. When the dam did fail, roughly 431 people died. The force of the water that came from the dam when it did fail caused chunks of the dam to go up to a mile downstream, some pieces were not found when inspectors tried to go and reconstruct the dam. The failure of the dam