Collapse of the Puentes dam in Lorca (1802)

The dam collapsed in 1802 killing 608 people.

A date in the history of Lorca which is of great significance is that of the 30th April 1802, the date of the collapse of the Puentes dam, the worst dam disaster ever recorded in Spain .

At the time, the straight-line dam, which is located 12 kilometres to the north-west of Lorca, was the longest in Spain, measuring 286 metres, as well as being 50 metres high and 8 metres wide at the top. Its foundations were on wooden pillars which were inserted into the sandy base.

The man who designed the dam was Jerónimo Ortiz de Lara, whose aim was to replace and improve on a previous construction which had collapsed in 1648. Ortiz de Lara’s project was a part of the modernizing fervour which characterized the reign of Carlos III, and he received full support from the King’s delegate, Antonio Robles Vives: thanks to this he was able to begin the construction in 1785, and the dam was completed in 1791.

Unfortunately the next few years were very dry, and the reservoir remained unfilled. However, the first few months of 1802 saw this climatic trend being bucked, especially in the month of March, when 220 litres per square metre of rainfall were recorded. The reservoir began to fill up, and with the possibility of an overflow looking imminent the city of Lorca was placed on alert at around four o’clock in the afternoon of 30th April.

Not long afterwards the dam burst, unleashing a twelve-metre-high wall of water which destroyed everything in its path as it rushed downhill towards the city.

The damage occasioned by the disaster was calamitous. Among the 608 who lost their lives was Robles Vives himself, and 809 houses were destroyed as well as 229 country dwellings. 30 cloth factories were reduced to rubble, as well as 22 saltpetre factories, three soap factories, eight mills, nine inns and five potteries. It was estimated that 41,000 trees had been uprooted, and the effects on local agriculture were cataclysmic. Perhaps the only positive consequence was the subsequent foundation of the country’s first specialist engineering school.

There is now a new reservoir and dam on the site, but the disaster of 1802 has not been forgotten. A few metres above ground level on the façade of the church of San Diego is a plaque which reads “the water from the Puentes reservoir reached this height on 30th April 1802”.

At the end of September 2010 the importance of the dam was once again reinforced when a Gota Fría struck the Guadalentín Valley, causing massive flood damage in the Puerto Lumbreras and Lorca municipalities. The dam absorbed 2000 cubic metres of water per second during the downpour, and by the time it stopped raining was holding 20 million cubic metres of water, enough to supply Lorca for 3 years.

Although there was widespread flooding in the Guadalentín Valley due to the sheer volume of water which fell, further disaster was averted and Lorca protected by controlled discharges of water into the canal and channel networks which have helped to prevent a replay of the 1802 disaster.

Image: Photo of the dam taken a few years after the event.

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