#RESIST
Doesn't look like sacrificing the excavator did any good, although I will defer a final opinion until more engineering experts chime in.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
Never stand to close to the hole or excavation!
I watched a sinkhole appear out of nowhere. The excavator almost fell in. Leaking sewer force main that was decades old formed a void. When they were removing some train tracks, two lanes gone in an instant.
Landslides and mudflows are unforgiving. The force generated is incredible.
Yep, once the levee has been breached, you’re options for are more or less limited to “well, I guess we’re waiting for the water to go down before we can fix it. Hope the evacuation team did its job”.
It’s been a while since I did flood and dam work, but about a decade ago USACE was testing some plastic inner-tube thingy that you could float into the breach long enough to fill the gap with something impermeable. Not sure how it worked out.
Like was said above, though, once you have one breach in an earth embankment, the resulting water level rise on the downstream side of the embankment will weaken the rest of it, and if you fix the one breach, it’ll most likely breach the next weakest point.