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No, this was an industrial accident, apparently caused by the failure of a level-sensing system which allowed the reservoir to be overfilled, resulting in overtopping and breaching of the impoundment.
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No matter how well it was built and maintained, if it overtops, it will fail, guaranteed.
Once it starts to flow over, it will siphon the water behind it as if it was in a hose coming out of your gas tank. But it's not in a hose and therefore rips up the ground it flows over.... it'll even tear up concrete.
For just that reason, dams would prefer to dump excess water through discharge pipes rather than over spillways as they can get out of control when they have to dump a lot of water quickly.