Now I know many of you live in or near cities and have never had the experience of being near one of these monsters, especially when it is running.
When I was younger I worked on a construction project that use a tiny JD350 dozer. When It was running, parked near very soft groun two things occurred. First was a sight I will never forget being a sport fisherman. The vibration of the machine brought literally thousands of dew worms to the serface. The second was that the macine started to sink into the ground.
I mentioned this because I wanted you to know what these machines are capable of. And this was a small machine.
Later in life I worked in the mines and got up close and personal with some of the biggest machinery I ever worked around.
Now, if you were to stand next to something as large, or larger than a D9, there is a definate Shaking of the ground and a very loud noise from the engine.
When you build an earth dyke, two things should take place.
1. The base fill should consist of very large boulsers and;
2. There should be a membrane in place that lays on the bottom and against the dyke.
There are various reasons for this but the main ones are for stability and to prevent seepage.
After looking at still photos of the Dozer sitting very close to the breach (Ican't find any to download right now) two things appear to be evident.
1. There appears to be no membrane.
2. There appear to be no boulders.
From all this I can only conclude that the dozer had been working on the dyke (evidenced by how close to the breached it sits abandoned) and the vibration turned the mix beneath it to soup, the water seeped through weakening the dyke which inevitably burst sending millions of gallons of dirty water through the breach. Some of it made a immediate right turn and went down a small creek into Quesnel Lake. The rest went basically left pushing the slag to one end of Polley Lake.
It's going to be real interesting to see what the panel says, how long of a delay the government puts on publishing the report so they can spin its' content, and just what will happen about the cleanup.ie: who will pay for it. The cleanup I mean.
