REXBURG – As the 50th anniversary of the Teton Dam disaster approaches, Nathaniel Gee, a professional civil engineer with a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University specializing in dam safety, recently wrote a book about the incident. The book title is Failure and Fortitude: How Faith, Politics and Power Shaped the Teton Dam Disaster.
The 305 foot-high Teton Dam collapsed on June 5, 1976 releasing billions of gallons of water, killing 11 people and causing up to $2 billion in damages.
Gee, a Salt Lake native, is the Manager of the Dam Safety Oversight and Governance Group for the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Gee was a regional engineer for the LC Region of the Bureau of Reclamation and has helped maintain some of the largest dams in the United States.
Throughout his career he has performed various inspections including rope access and dive inspections of some of the nation’s largest and oldest dams, including Roosevelt and Horse Mesa dams on the Salt River in Arizona, Parker Dam spanning the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, and the majestic Hoover Dam.
Gee earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Brigham Young University, and a master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Nevada – Las Vegas and a PhD at BYU.
“My dad was there the night before the dam burst and he talked about it often,” Gee said. “My interest peeked in the Teton Dam when I became employed as a dam engineer.”
Gee has been to the site and researched that day in June. He considered the lives lost the dam failure, and how it all could have been prevented.
“I spoke at the site with a bunch of engineers and the geologist that was there at the time,” he said. “He retired a long time ago.
“The dam was a huge impactful failure, and the bigger story is why it was built in the first place. There are some things within the organization and the politics behind it is the bigger story.”
The history of the dam needs to be understood before they attempt to build another one.
“The Teton dam could have been built safe at the time in a cost-effective way,” he said. “I think if the builders would have looked at the geology more closely it could have prevented the disaster.”
Gee said the nearby Ririe dam was built in the same kind of geology considerations by the CCC, and it has stood the test of time. The Teton was built by the Bureau of Reclamation. If they had looked at the other agency before they took it on it might still be there today.
The Teton Dam was built on the Teton River between Freemont and Madison counties.
The dam failed while it was being filled for the first time, killing 11 people and thousands of livestock. The wall of water displaced thousands of residents in the counties below the dam.
Gee’s book is about 90,000 words with photographs. He talked about how the people of Southeast Idaho came to live there and explored the politics at the time and how it affected the building of the dam.
The book can be purchased from the publisher Cedar Fort Publishing on their website:
https://www.cedarfort.com/products/failure-and-fortitude
or Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Fortitude-Politics-Shaped-Disaster/dp/1462151345/ref=sr_1_1