Quitman,MS - The dam at Archusa Water Park in Quitman, Mississippi has breached. What once a beautiful reservoir, has now turned into a scene “No one wants to see” according to park director, Allen Wright. “I got the call at about 5:00 yesterday afternoon, from our park manager here, she said that the emergency spill way had breached. At this time, we don’t know exactly why it happened, we’ve had some issues here, but the park staff is doing a good job at keeping an eye on it."
Although it’s unsure what exactly caused the breach, Chief of the Mississippi Dam Safety Division William McKercher has his thoughts. “Looks like we had a failure portion of the dam right adjacent to the spillway started to wash out, and it undermined the concrete in this auxiliary spillway or secondary spillway, and it caused a portion of that to collapse and fall, and ultimately that led to complete loss of the reservoir.”
Seeing incident like this before, Chief McKercher also offers his advice to dam owners. “One thing we encourage dam owner to do is they’re actually required by law to inspect their dams every 60 days, to stay familiar with the current conditions but then also to be able to identify problems as they develop.”
Park Director Allen Wright is also happy there were no casualties. “Emergency Management people all came out last night and responded well to this, there was nobody in danger downstream, nobody had to be evacuated because of the water, so it went pretty well considering all.”
The Park says it is still too early to know what caused the dam to breach, but that it will take some time before everything is back to normal.
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