Italian specialists arrive at Mosul Dam for repair project

A team of Italian technicians arrived at the Mosul Dam in northern Iraq on Thursday, as part of an emergency campaign to repair the country's largest dam before it collapses.

The advance team from the Italian engineering firm Trevi Group will prepare for the arrival of further engineers within the next few weeks.

American and Iraqi officials have repeatedly warned that the dam is in imminent danger of collapse, which could spell a disaster of epic proportions for the conflict-ravaged country.

The dam, built by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, during the Iraq-Iran war was seen as a vanity project, built on unstable ground with its gypsum foundations constantly being eroded by water.

From the day it was inaugurated in 1985, maintenance crews have had to continuously pour cement under its foundation in a procedure known as "grouting".

However, the grouting operations were halted for several weeks in 2014 when Islamic State group militants took control of the dam, allowing for large cavities to open up under the dam's foundations.

The 113-meter-high dam is at risk of collapsing into a hole in the ground, causing an unprecedented disaster, officials have said.

In late February, the US embassy in Baghdad called the dam's risk of collapse "serious and unprecedented", and Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi urged Mosul residents along the Tigris river to move at least six kilometres (3.7 miles) from its banks.

The dam's collapse could trigger a massive inland tsunami 25 metres high, and put the lives of up to 1.5 million Iraqis living in the Tigris river valley at risk, according to US estimates

The dam's collapse could trigger a massive inland tsunami 25 metres high, and put the lives of up to 1.5 million Iraqis living in the Tigris river valley at risk, according to US estimates. By comparison, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the world's worst natural disasters in recorded history, had a wave height of around 30m.

"Iraq is on the brink of a massive humanitarian and environmental disaster because of the dam. It could collapse as soon as April because at that time of year it will be under pressure from rain and thawing snow," an Iraqi official previously told The New Arab.

According to a Foreign Policy report, a team of researchers at a university in Sweden compiled many of the simulations studying a potential dam breach, as part of a wider study.

The researchers found that within about four hours, Mosul would be facing a wave of water almost 80 feet high; flooding would cover about 28 square miles. 

Within 22 hours, Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit would be hit with a 50-foot wall of water. 

And within two days of a dam breach, Baghdad itself - 400 miles downriver - would have 13 or so feet of water all over the centre of the city, and flooding would cover more than 80 square miles around the capital.

The Iraqi cabinet, with the agreement of the Ministry of Water Resources, awarded Italian firm Trevi the contract "to carry out the project of rehabilitating and maintaining the Mosul Dam".

The Trevi Group has carried out similar work at more than 150 other troubled dams, including in the United States.

Riyadh Izeddin, the dam's director, said that in addition to the maintenance and repair work, the Italian crews will also be installing advanced technology and training Iraqi staffers on how to operate the new machinery.