40 years ago people were rescued and Dam Alma-Ata.

July 15, 1973 in the Alma-Ata Small Gorge went gryazekamennaya huge avalanche that nearly destroyed the capital of the Kazakh SSR.

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July 7, 1963 Issyk disaster happened. Then mudflow destroyed the beautiful mountain lake and destroyed up to one hundred and fifty Almaty citizens, resting on its shore on Sunday (see. "Issyk tragedy - half a century»).
It was the last call, which forced the Kazakh leadership to reflect on the fact that over the Alma-Ata in mortal danger.

It was decided to build a powerful antimud slide protection dam in Medeo. Chronicling its construction led photojournalist "Evening Almaty" Vyacheslav Kamorsky, a few years ago who left Kazakhstan and now living in Kaluga. He sent specifically for Forbes.kz series of old pictures with their signatures - the construction of the dam, on the last exactly 40 years ago, the village and the elimination of its consequences.

The dam for the first time in the world decided to create with the help of directed explosions. The first rumbled 21 October 1966.

The second explosion lifted into the sky clouds of dust of the earth and April 14, 1967-th. Famous Kazakh ethnographer Vladimir Proskurin, who now lives in Berlin, says that he was less successful and eventually flaws in antimud slide protection actions provoked lava mudflow, which went to the city July 15, 1973.

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"With breakthrough 17-meter-high dam in the town Mynzhilki (3 thous. M above sea level), the maximum water flow reached 250 cubic meters per second, during the passage of the tourist center" Gorelnik "already 3200, and at the entrance to selehranilische - 5180 cubic meters per second - writes Proskurin.

- Selle of 5, 3 million. Cubic meters of cut building roads, machinery, electricity, people set out to fight nature. At 18 hours 17 minutes, the "dragon mountain" has reached the dam, and for three hours trying to break it. Formed gryazekamennoe sea.

The flow was accompanied by a strong rumble and shudder slopes. It is clear that after such a furious work mudflow did not leave intact any hydraulic structure. For example, the through antimud slide protection traps, special constructions, which is attached concrete. Sami farm welded steel 40-inch beams, each weighing 27 tons, fixed eight pairs of steel cables in a rendered monolithic rock anchors during mudslide were torn like rotten thread.

Antimud slide protection rockfill dam took the brunt of the disaster, but selehranilische no free volume for detention new catastrophic mudflows. Picturesque mountain gorge turned into a desert canyon.

Selle destroyed residential buildings tourist center "Gorelnik" caused great casualties. After this tragic event, sports and recreation facilities tracts were closed forever ».

Whatever it was, the dam held back a huge blow, and the city was saved. The second phase of the dam was commissioned in 1980, it rose to a height of 150 meters.