Dam failures that killed 100 or more people since 1900

Map of 18 locations · Worldwide

Embankments, concrete arches and mine tailings impoundments that gave way between 1917 and 2023, each pinned where the structure stood when it failed and the water or slurry went downstream. The record behind them is uneven: some tolls are fixed by an official count, others are reported differently by the archives and studies that examined the same collapse, and in several cases the cause was argued over long afterwards. Two entries are included where the engineered dam itself held and something else failed instead. The set follows the list of major dam failures in Wikipedia's article on dam failure, read and transcribed by hand with every deliberate breach left out, so it is a curator's reading of that record rather than a database query.

Places in this collection

  • 2023 Derna dam collapses — Storm Daniel reached the Libyan town of Derna from the Mediterranean on 10 September, bringing more rain in a single day than the town woul…
  • 2019 Brumadinho dam disaster — The Corrego do Feijao tailings dam, owned by the iron ore producer Vale, collapsed in the mining town of Brumadinho in southeastern Brazil.…
  • 2008 Koshi embankment breach — News of an impending disaster spread through Kusaha village, in Nepal's Sunsari District five kilometres from the Indian border on the east…
  • 1986 Kantale Dam failure — The ancient dam in Trincomalee district, more than 50 feet high and over 13,000 feet long, breached in the early hours and rapidly flooded…
  • 1985 Val di Stava dam collapse — Two mine tailings dams in northeastern Italy failed suddenly, releasing approximately 180,000 cubic metres of tailings that buried the vill…
  • 1972 Canyon Lake Dam failure in the Black Hills flood — A flash flood in the watershed above Rapid City carried debris-laden water into Canyon Lake Reservoir, where it accumulated and clogged the…
  • 1972 Buffalo Creek flood — At approximately 8:00 A.M. coal slurry impoundment number 3, built on a hillside in Logan County, West Virginia by the Pittston Coal Compan…
  • 1966 Plakalnitsa tailings dam failure — Around midday the tailings dam of the Mir-Placalnica zinc and lead mine, sited uphill of the village of Sgorigrad in northern Bulgaria, gav…
  • 1965 El Cobre tailings dam failure — At 12:35 p.m. an earthquake centred in the Cabildo and La Ligua area brought down two tailings dams holding copper mine waste, and the mini…
  • 1963 Vajont Dam disaster — The dam itself stood. A mass of roughly 270 million cubic metres collapsed off the southern slope of the reservoir and into the water, gene…
  • 1961 Panshet Dam failure — The dam on the Ambi River burst in the early hours after prolonged heavy rains, in its first year of holding back water, and within three h…
  • 1959 Malpasset Dam failure — The concrete arch dam near Frejus, in the Cannes district of southern France, failed after several days of heavy rain and high winds. Case…
  • 1959 Vega de Tera dam failure — Around midnight the dam in Zamora province, built by the company Moncabril, broke and released nearly eight million cubic metres of water o…
  • 1953 Tangiwai disaster — The dam that gave way was not engineered: it was a barrier of tephra accumulated around Mt Ruapehu's crater during earlier eruptions, which…
  • 1935 Sella Zerbino dam failure at Molare — On the morning of 13 August, after a heavy rainstorm raised the level of Lake Ortiglieto, the rock sill supporting the secondary dam of the…
  • 1928 St. Francis Dam failure — The dam in San Francisquito Canyon, about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, collapsed two and a half minutes before midnight, and the floo…
  • 1923 Gleno Dam failure — An 80 metre long section of the dam on Gleno Creek, in Valle del Povo within Valle di Scalve, Lombardy, collapsed in the early morning abou…
  • 1917 Tigra Dam failure — Built in 1915 near Tighra village outside Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, the dam failed in the afternoon after infiltration into its sandstone fo…

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