Dam on the White Desse

Control tower of the Broken Dam (2006, masonry eroded below, still without concrete enclosure)

Memorial stone for the victims of the 1916 disaster

The dam on the White Desse is better known today as the Broken Dam ( Protržená přehrada in Czech ) and is located in the Jizera Mountains ( Czech Republic ) at 800 mnm , 5.5 km northwest of Desná (Dessendorf).

Because of the recurring flood damage caused by Desse (Desná) and Kamnitz (Kamenice), dams should be built at the same time on the White and Black Desse . The plans came from the civil engineers Otto Intze in Aachen and Wilhelm Plenkner in Prague and were confirmed in 1908.

In 1912 the construction of the dam on the White Desse (Bílá Desná) began. The technology for the dam construction was taken over from the construction on the Schwarzen Desse ( Darretalsperre ) that had already started the year before . The construction cost 484,000 Austrian crowns and was completed in June 1915.

On September 18, 1916 around 4 p.m. the dam of the dam could no longer withstand the pressure of the water and broke. Within a quarter of an hour, the reservoir emptied uncontrollably, and the water masses, together with the debris and debris that had been carried away, formed an eight-meter-high mudslide that rushed through the villages of Dessendorf (Desná) and Tannwald (Tanvald).

The catastrophe left 62 dead. 33 houses had completely disappeared, 69 badly damaged. 307 people were left homeless and 1020 lost their jobs. On March 27, 1918, Emperor Karl I visited the city of Tannwald, which was still suffering from the consequences of the accident. In order to deal with the causes and to avoid future incidents, the "Commission for Reservoir Systems" (now Reservoir Commission ) was founded in the Ministry of Public Works on October 27, 1918 . On October 10, 1937, a memorial plaque was placed in Dessendorf on a boulder that was swept away by the flood.

The former control tower over the horizontal outlet of the reservoir of the dam survived the accident and is still a monument in the valley of the White Desse. The 1.1 km long connecting tunnel to the Darretalsperre was also retained. The Krömerbaude inn (Krömerova bouda, Czech. Potted), which was built on the bottom of the former dam in 1926, was demolished after 1945.

The cause of the dam breach was identified as water seeping through the dam body, caused by groundwater penetrating the earth dam and weathered granite in the dam floor. Presumably the load-bearing capacity of the dam base was not checked thoroughly. On October 24, 1932, the trial for guilty of the disaster ended with the acquittal of all defendants.

Subsequent investigations revealed insufficient sealing and also identified project planning errors due to an unfavorable location of the control tower and the tunnel as further causes.

Web links

Commons : Dam on the White Desse - Collection of images

Individual evidence

↑ Commemorative plaque "Krömerova bouda Krömerbaude 1926–1945" with a drawing of the house, embedded in a wall remnant of the house, goryizerskie.pl, accessed August 6, 2018.

50.800277777778 15.277222222222Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 1 ″ N , 15 ° 16 ′ 38 ″ E

[1] Commemorative plaque "Krömerova bouda Krömerbaude 1926–1945" with a drawing of the house, embedded in a wall remnant of the house, goryizerskie.pl, accessed August 6, 2018.