Malpasset Dam

The ruins of the dam

The Malpasset Dam was an arch dam on
the Reyran River, located approximately
7 km north of Fréjus on the French Riviera
(Côte d'Azur), southern France, in the Var
département. It collapsed on December 2,
1959, killing 423 people in the resulting
flood.[1][2] The damage amounted to an
equivalent total of $68 million.

Construction
The dam was a doubly curved equal angle
arch type with variable radius. It was built
to supply drinking and irrigation water for
the region. Construction began in April
1952 and was finished in 1954. Another
source reports that construction began as
early as 1941. Delays due to lack of
funding and labor strikes interrupted
construction a few times. The project was
led by well-known French engineer André
Coyne. Construction cost 580 million
francs (by 1955 prices), and was funded
and owned by Var département.
Concurrent with the dam construction, the
A8 autoroute was also being built 1,400
meters further down the course of the
Reyran from the dam location.

The dam was supposed to regulate the

rate of the flow of the river that it was near
and store 50 million cubic meters of water
for agriculture, and domestic use and for
the tourism sector of the area.[3] The dam
was 222 metres in width, 66 metres high,
and had a thickness of 6.78 metres at the
base and 1.5 metres at the rim.[4]

Disaster
During November 1959, there were the first
warning signs: a "trickle of clear water
observed high on the right [side]" and then
cracks noticed later in the month in the
concrete apron at the dam toe.[5]

The dam was breached at 21:13 on

December 2, 1959.[6] This was partially
due to the water level in the dam rising at a
fast pace due to rainfall, and by noon on 2
December 1959 the reservoir had reached
its maximum level. The guardian André
Ferro asked for permission to release the
excess water and was denied the ability to
do so until 6pm of that day.[6] The amount
of water was by then so high that it took
three hours to release only a few
centimeters of water.[4] The entire wall
then collapsed with only a few blocks
remaining on the right bank. Pieces of the
dam are still scattered throughout the
area.

The breach created a massive dam-break

wave, or wall of water, 40 metres (130 ft)
high and moving at 70 kilometres (43 mi)
per hour, destroying two small villages,
Malpasset and Bozon, the highway
construction site, and in 20 minutes, still
standing 3 metres (10 ft) high, reaching
Fréjus. The water was recorded traveling
at speeds up to 70 km/h with large chunks
of the concrete wall some weighing up to
600 tons.[4] Various small roads and
railroad tracks were also destroyed, water
flooding the western half of Fréjus and
finally reaching the sea.

It was reported that the death toll of the

dam breach was 423, with 135 children
under the age of 15,[6] 15 minors between
15 and 21 years old, 134 men, 112 women,
and 27 individuals who were never
identified. Separately, 79 children were
orphaned.[4] Additionally, 83 people were
injured.[7] The physical toll was higher with
155 buildings destroyed, 796 buildings
damaged, and 1350 hectares destroyed,
the amount of destruction totalling about
425 million euros in 2010 terms.[7]

Cause
Geological and hydrological studies were
conducted in 1946 and the dam location
was considered suitable. Due to lack of
proper funding, however, the geological
study of the region was not thorough. The
lithology underlying the dam is a
metamorphic rock called gneiss. This rock
type is known to be relatively
impermeable, meaning that there is no
significant groundwater flow within the
rock unit, and it does not allow water to
penetrate the ground. On the right side
(looking down the river), was also rock,
and a concrete wing wall was constructed
to connect the wall to the ground.

A tectonic fault was later found as the

most likely cause of the disaster. Other
factors contributed as well; the water
pressure was aimed diagonally towards
the dam wall, and was not found initially.
As a consequence, water collected under a
wall and was unable to escape through the
ground due to the impermeability of the
gneiss rock underneath the dam.[8] Finally,
another theory quotes a source stating
that explosions during building of the
highway might have caused shifting of the
rock base of the dam. Weeks before the
breach, some cracking noises were heard,
but they were not examined. It is not clear
when the cracking noises started. The
right side of the dam had some leaks in
November 1959.
Between November 19 and December 2,
there was 50 centimetres (20 in) of rainfall,
and 13 centimetres (5.1 in) in 24 hours
before the breach. The water level in the
dam was only 28 centimetres (11 in) away
from the edge. Rain continued, and the
dam guardian wanted to open the
discharge valves, but the authorities
refused, claiming the highway
construction site was in danger of
flooding. Five hours before the breach, at
18:00 hours, the water release valves were
opened, but with a discharge rate of 40
m³/s, it was not enough to empty the
reservoir in time.
Until the Malpasset incident, only 4 other
incidents of arch-type dam breaches were
recorded:

Manitou dam, Manitou Springs,

Colorado, 1924 at 38°52′35.47″N
104°59′38.30″W
Moyie Dam (the Eileen Dam), Moyie
Springs, Idaho, 1925 at 48.77550°N
116.15514°W
Lake Lanier, North Carolina, 1926
Purisima dam, California, 1930

See also
List of natural disasters by death toll –
Floods and Landslides
 List of hydroelectric power station
failures
List of wars and disasters by death toll
– Flood disasters
Vajont Dam
St. Francis Dam

References
1. The Malpasset Catastrophe in 1959
2. 1999 documentary in French with
interviews and footage of the disaster
3. French Ministry for Sustainable
Development, DGPR/SRT/BARPI (April
2009). "Burst of a Dam, 2 December
 1959, Malpasset (Var) France" (PDF).
ARIA: 1–7.
4. "The Malpasset Dam Disaster – could
the Var suffer again? – Riviera
Reporter" . www.rivierareporter.com.
Retrieved 2018-04-23.
5. Goodman, Richard E (May 16, 2013).
"On the Failure of Malpasset Dam"
(PDF). University Cal. Berkeley
PowerPoints.
6. "60 ans après la catastrophe - A Fréjus,
les 423 morts du Malpasset hantent
toujours les survivants" .
www.lamontagne.fr. 22 November
2019. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
7. Luino, Fabio; Trebò, Pier Giuseppe
(January–April 2010). "The Malpasset
dam (France) fifty years after the
failure of December 2, 1959 and
references to similar Italian cases" .
Geoingegneria Ambientale e Mineraria
(in Italian). 47 (1): 53–80. ISSN 1121-
9041 .
8. Erpicum, S; Archambeau (2004).
"Computation of the Malpasset Dam
Break with a 2D Conservative Flow
Solver on a Multiblock Structured
Grid" (PDF). International Conference
on Hydroinformatics; World Scientific
Publishing Company: 1–8.
J. Bellier, Le barrage de Malpasset, 1967
 Max Herzog, Elementare
Talsperrenstatik, 1998
Max Herzog, Bautechnik 67 Heft 12,
1990

External links

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Cracking of dams
Website dedicated to the disaster of
Malpasset

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