Reporter's Notebook: Jeff Flock on Niagara Falls

Jeff Flock rides the Niagara River

CNN's Jeff Flock is spending the Fourth of July at Niagara Falls, and answered a few questions about the popular tourist destination.

CNN: Is Niagara Falls the tallest falls in the world?

Flock: No. Not even close. There are about 500 other falls that are taller. The highest is Angel Falls in Venezuela, which is 979 meters (3212 feet). The Horseshoe Falls at Niagara is 52 meters (170 feet). But many of the world's falls have little water flowing over them. This time of year 100,000 cubic feet of water a second flows over Niagara.

CNN: What is the Horseshoe Falls? Isn't Niagara Falls just one big falls?

Flock: Grand Island, in the middle of the Niagara River, actually divides the flow of the Niagara River into two channels. The bigger one on the Canadian side diverts the water over the Horseshoe Falls. The smaller American channel diverts water over the smaller American Falls and a still smaller falls called "Bridal Veil." To give you a sense of size, the Horseshoe Falls is about 2200 feet across. The American Falls is a little less than half that. The power of the water continues to erode the rock that it flows over. Geologists say in the last 12,000 years the falls have moved more than seven miles upstream from their original location.

CNN: Have people really gone over the falls in a barrel?

Flock: Yes. And this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first. On October 24, 2001 Mrs. Annie Edson Taylor, 63, of Bay City, Michigan was strapped into a special harness inside a barrel. Seventeen minutes later she was pulled dazed, but triumphant, from the water. According to the Niagara Parks Commission, 15 people have taken the plunge in barrels and other contraptions. Ten have survived. Five died, including the last to attempt it. Thirty-nine year old Robert Overacker of Camarillo, Texas went over the Horseshoe Falls on a jet ski on October 1, 1995. He tried to open a rocked propelled parachute to soften his landing but it malfunctioned. His body was recovered from the river.

CNN: How much hydroelectric power does Niagara Falls generate?

Flock: Both the U.S. and Canada generate power from the falls, basically dividing the flow of water. On the U.S. side, water is diverted upriver through underground tunnels 46 feet wide and 66 feet deep that take it to turbines at the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant and then dump it back into the river. On the Canadian side a similar process carries the water to the Sir Adam Beck Generating stations. A failure at one of the plants on the Canadian side triggered the largest blackout in North America in 1965, which affected most of Ontario and the Northeastern U.S. One other interesting note is that the water diversion is done at night during tourist season so as not to take away from the beauty of the falls. If you wake up in the middle of the night, as I did this week, and go out and look at the falls you can visibly see the reduced flow.

CNN: Has the water ever stopped flowing at Niagara?

Flock: Yes, several times. The first and only time that both American and Canadian falls were shut off was in October 1848, when an ice jam formed on Lake Erie and blocked the flow of the river. It was so dry some people even walked across the riverbed picking up souvenirs. About 30 hours later the ice broke up and the wall of water came roaring back. Ice also stopped the American Falls six other times. Finally, in 1969 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blocked the flow to the American side for seven months to make repairs to the face of the American Falls.