Aerial photos
With these measures, the amount of water flowing over the falls was reduced from 60,000 liters per second to just 15,000 liters per second—a huge difference! And as the river receded, workers began cleaning up the waste. In the meantime, officials from the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) took the opportunity to get a closer look at the exposed riverbed.
Wanting to come up with a long-term plan to protect the American Falls, the USACE team took aerial photographs of the entire site. However, after six hours had passed, the diversions were closed again and the river flow returned. Coincidentally, this brief exercise would become the basis for a much more ambitious operation, which took place later.