Newswise — ROLLA, Mo. - Missouri University of Science and Technology's Dr. J. David Rogers, the Karl F. Hasselmann Missouri Chair in Geological Engineering, is available to discuss the deadly dam collapse in the village of Brumadinho in southeastern Brazil. News reports say 60 people are dead and hundreds are missing after a dam at an iron ore mine collapsed on Friday, releasing a sea of mud that engulfed houses. 

Rogers is sought-after expert on a wide variety of natural disasters, including floods, earthquakes and landslides, as well as dam and levee failures that occur during a disaster. He is an expert in the geoforensics of dam, levee and slope stability failures, flood control and fluvial geomorphology, the Mississippi Delta, and site characterization for seismic site response. 

Rogers has written articles and prepared posted lectures on the evolution of flood control practice, dam and levee failures, landslide dams, Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal and the Tennessee Valley Authority, among many others.

He was the lead researcher on a paper published in 2015 in Water Policy law journal titled “Interaction between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Orleans Levee Board preceding the drainage canal wall failures and catastrophic flooding of New Orleans in 2005.”

The article focused on the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and its lack of external peer reviews that allowed for faulty flood walls to be installed in the city. It pinpointed the key factors that led to the walls’ failure and the actions taken years before the disaster that allowed the engineering oversights to occur.

Contact Sarah Potter at (573) 202-3366 or email her at [email protected] to setup an interview. 

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