community

PANAMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Rodrigo Lam

The Panama Canal's Engineering

Wednesday, November 7

Balboa Niko's, 7:30 pm

Hello all,

First Wednesday of every month is the PHS meeting night. This means NOVEMBER 7th is our next meeting. the usual place, the usual suspects.

PHS November Meeting... NIKO's Cafe in Balboa, 7:30 p.m. (downstairs, as usual)...

We'll also discuss the plans for the Annual PHS Christmas Party in December, so be sure not to miss the meeting.

Help grow our membership. Please bring a friend along!

Our Featured Presentation for November 7, 2007:

The Panama Canal has begun a new project that will permit transits of “Post-Panamax” vessels, thereby incrementing its total capacity. This will require the construction of two sets of locks at the Pacific and the Atlantic and also the excavation and dredging of millions of cubic meters of earth and rock for the access channels to the Locks. This construction is seen as one of the largest engineering projects in the Americas.

Although the Canal is undergoing a makeover, we should understand and appreciate the engineering challenges that the present Canal presented from its inception and over the years, and we must honor those men and women who made many sacrifices, some even giving their lives, to venture into an unknown country, with an ocean of other people from other cultures and races, and who had to contend with difficult living situations, tropical diseases, and dangerous jobsite conditions, in order to build the canal that many considered impossible.

It took great leadership and engineering to make the present Canal as it will take great leaders and engineers to successfully build this expanded and improved Canal.

This talk, including Power-Point presentation, will portray many of those aspects, both as history and as a preview of the challenges yet to be surmounted.

Our presenter, Ing. Rodrigo Lam, has been working for the Panama Canal for a dozen years in the Engineering Field and is the grandson of Fernando Manfredo, who served as Panama’s first Administrator of the Canal and is one of our long-time members and active supportor.

See you at the meeting NEXT WEDNESDAY!

John W. Carlson
President