Gov. Walz to tour damage at Rapidan Dam, provide update on flood conditions

It was only a week ago. Clearly no rush for the govenor. 😂

Waltz, I wait with baited breath.

they should had a guy on the dam in a safety harness attached to a crane removing the logs from the spillway supposedly there used to be a boom upstream to catch logs dont know what happened to it

Takes two newsreaders these days to do 20 second lead-ins...... His Highness the governor just NOW found the time to do a publicity photo shoot at the dam....

Pure negligence

Damn it’s still raining up there smh

Time to add ‘scour’ to the list of extreme weather impacts

Why haven't they blown the rest of the dam??? Do they imagine they can just "repair" what's left?

I'd use any excuse to get away from Murderapolis, too.

What was the dams age?

This whole event was easily predicted. I've never been there in my life and when I saw the drone footage looking upstream of the dam, this immediate question pops into mind: "During heavy rainfall, how is that going to fit through this using nothing but those gates? You have your answer. The dam was physically not tall enough and therefore the flood gates were also not tall enough to let out enough water. What they also could have done is instead of wasting space putting those smaller gates in with dividing concrete in between them, they could have had fewer larger gates capable of handling the flow. Yes, taking into account the timeline of the event, height of the dam and each one of those dividers between the little dam gates, we're talking about trillions of gallons of extra water that could have flowed through there ahead of time and the water wouldn't have risen as high. I want to know who engineered this dam to begin with. Somebody was an absolute freaking idiot, period. You don't build a dam for "just enough" water release, you build it for the flood of the century. I'm also curious if the dam management started releasing as much water as possible before the heavy rain event to get a head start. This is supposed to be standard practice for all dams. They figure out how much rain approximately will come to the area and start releasing that amount ahead of time so that when it does rain, it just fills the reservoir back up. You don't wait until the dam is about to overtop before releasing max water. Also, 50 feet on either side of the downside of that dam should be extremely reinforced concrete. There shouldn't have been earth randomly there to just erode away. As soon as any erosion was noted, large boulders should have been pushed off from the top with heavy equipment to slow the erosion. I would take the back window out of the heavy equipment, tie a rope around the operator's waist and then have them push boulders in. That way if it collapsed, they'd have a decent chance of being yanked out of the back of the heavy equipment as it fell. Good way to save a life. They might get some injuries, sure.

Walz had to go see the damage he caused first hand. Everyone knows this dam should have been dealt with years ago.

That Bridge is not going anywhere the Kassons are deep in the bedrock and still have the steel barriers around the cement base.. Those Cement base sits on top of a cement pad that is probably 3 to 4 ft reinforce cement of 2" thick re-bar.. Good luck moving that

I hope the family who lost their home AND store are heavily compensated by the state.

Waltz nothing but bal bal bal !!!!

Stay away!!

From what I have read, the county owns the dam. If they choose to repair it or remove it, it's their choice. However, please do not come for to the federal government for the funds to do either. The county and it's residents reaped the rewards of the dam and should pay for whatever they decide to with it.

Democrat gov