Dam Break in Georgia – 1...

Toccoa Falls College is a beautiful place.  Located in Stephens County in Northeast Georgia, the picturesque campus is about 100 miles northeast of Atlanta.   The Christian liberal arts college was moved to Toccoa in 1911 because of the railroad.  The AMTRAK Crescent still stops there even today. 

Above the campus and falls, an earthen dam on Toccoa Creek, the Kelly Barnes dam, holds back a fifty five acre lake that contains 176 million gallons of water.  The lake is one of the prettiest in Georgia.  The creek gurgles down from the lake and rushes over the chasm of the 186 foot Toccoa Falls, thirty feet higher than Niagara Falls.  The creek then meanders through the campus in a steep box canyon.  The topography would play an important role in the disaster that unfolded on this morning in 1977. 

 Weather maps on the morning of Saturday, November 5, 1977 showed an upper level low pressure system centered over the Mississippi Coast.  A surface low was near Mobile.  Moist southeasterly winds were funneling moisture into the mountains of Northeast Georgia.  The low would move northeast and weaken.  Weather maps from the morning of Sunday, November 6th belied the fact that a disaster had occurred. 
           

Heavy rains fell across the area all day Saturday and through the evening hours.  Worried security guards and fire department officials  monitored rises on the creek during the evening, and for a time, the water was over a bridge that went to a trailer park for students.  But the water receded after midnight.  Earlier, the deputies had driven up to the dam to check on its condition.  They found that the lake level was several feet below the top of the dam and did not see any cause for alarm. 
           

Around 1:25 a.m., as the campus lay sleeping peacefully, the dam gave way.  In seconds, millions of gallons of water were rushing over the falls and thundering into the box canyon, piling up to an unbelievable height.  It spewed out with tremendous force, a giant wall of water sweeping everything in its path.  Less than two minutes later, the water surged into the western part of the campus.  Residents had no warning other than the thunderous roar. 
           

When all was said and done, thirty nine died and another sixty were injured. Much of the student housing was destroyed or damaged.  The college gradually recovered and today has an enrollment of about 850 people and thirty six buildings.