After the flood, one fact became known. No one at the College knew who was in charge of the dam.
"Water, like nature, as a whole is not fundamentally dangerous, but it is terribly unforgiving of carelessness. If a one-word description of this tragedy were in order, that word would be ignorance. Ignorance of proper design, construction and maintenance procedures for earth structures and ignorant use of flood plains."
-Kenneth Bryson, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, "One Year Later," Outdoors in Georgia, Nov, 1978, 10.
The dam was never rebuilt. Financially, however, the college was better after the flood. Four million dollars of donations came pouring into the college. This enabled them to pay off two million dollars of debt and rebuild the campus.
The State of Georgia soon passed the Georgia Safe Dams Act which authorized the State of Georgia to inspect dams within its borders, as well as making it illegal to build a dam except in accordance with the act. Within two weeks of the dam failure the Army Corps of Engineers personnel visited 95 dams in 49 states. Sadly, The Kelly Barnes Dam was not the only dam to break in the 1970s. Buffalo Creek, West Virginia and the Teton Dam in Idaho both failed and received much attention. With this attention, the Federal government soon appropriated 100 million as part of a National Dam Inspection Act.
Other Posts in this Series:
Part I - Unseen Danger
Part II - A Wall of Water, Get Out!
