I originally thought about a canoe, but now I think something wider would be better.

Alumnacraft?

You will not safely float out of a broken dam situation.   It ain't like you think.  But something light and narrow might not be a bad idea.

A BOAT!!  How about moving!!

You should be pricing helicopters.

Jet Ski is always the correct answer.

How to Hold Your Breath Like a Deep-Sea Freediver

Maybe something like this...

If I were you, I'd either invest in a real estate agent or invest a few Sunday mornings at a church.

Surf's up!

Good suggestion, but OP said $1000.

I suggest an old propane tank.    Make sure you clean it thoroughly and install a hatch, Beforehand.

You being serious bro ?

The dams we have here would, without question, fucking kill you if you live (and are home) within at least half a mile or so of them.

No boats
Buy the best PFD’s you can afford
Buy good helmets

Hot air balloon, inflated tied off, ready to hop in and float above the raging flood waters.

I have family that experienced the Buffalo Creek event in WV.  Long story short, a boat won't help.

Can we get long story long and hear what did (or would) help? A tornado shelter? One of those little yellow plastic inflatable life vests? A 9mm round to the CNS?

Yep! like this

Boat isn't going to do shit but get swept up in debris and kill you.

Your valuables should be loaded in a trailer and already parked on high ground. If you have two vehicles I would leave tow vehicle attached to trailer at same high point. First notice that the dam is in danger you leave grab your vehicle and trailer and don't look back until the water has gone down.

Even if you had time to make it into your boat, the raging flood waters would capsize you and you’d be crushed in a debris jam.

Move in across the street from a nuke plant instead.

Edit: Damnit, beat by 12 seconds!

Get a zodiac or one of those white water rafts. Get some life vests too.

Isn’t a jon boat the standard flood boat? Good luck with that when a dam breaks, but it’ll definitely be in the right price range.

I have done several projects up that holler and you are correct. You can still see the damage to this day from it.  You can stand down in the street and look up toward the mountain side, on either side of road, and see how high the water got because every living thing from that line down is new growth vegetation and everything above the line is hard woods probably as old as the mountain itself.  It ripped every living thing out of that holler from the high water level down.

Unless you live far back in the flood plain a boat is not going to help if you live close to a dam and it let's go. This from experience with levees in Louisiana all my life. If you live far enough away that the water slowly comes up then a boat will help.

Hot air ballons burn to much fuel. And are extremely expensive   Just tie some weather balloons to a lawn chair. Should be under $1000

Have you ever seen UP!?

You will see a cow on the roof of a cotton house

I remember that, was 12.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_flood

Dibs on...well, whatever doesnt wash away

In all honestly, OP could buy 10 cans of Helium and a bunch of weather balloons.

Have it all ready for deployment.

Obviously, he will need to test it beforehand, and that will cost extra.

I propose that Arfcom fund this endeavor.

I’ll donate the first $5.  With the stipulation that OP swears he will follow through and post video of every stage of the project, to include the inaugural flight.

Hot air balloon.

A gheenoe or riverhawk may interest you.  Lots of people call flat back canoes, gheenoes, but they aren't.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but he edited and added he lives 25 miles away from the dam.

So depending on how much notice you had, the elevation and terrain between you and the dam it might be useful.If you use google earth are you in a straight line or 25 miles off to one side or the other?

If a straight-ish line even off to one side or the other by a few miles, you might still be screwed.

Has something happened recently to make you think it might give way at some point?

Lol a boat ain’t gonna do you any good. I’d maybe stash some quality helmets and life vests. Perhaps some mini spare air tanks from a scuba store, but good luck holding on to them when the water hits. But really, when damns break things like dozers get tossed around like nothing.

"That's not my ring!"

Get out of the there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam#Collapse_and_flood_wave

Dig a nice big deep hole in the ground, big enough for your family.  Line it with wood, use cedar for rot resistance.  Seal the seams well with aquarium grade silicone caulking.   Make a nice tight fitting lid, you can use a metal trashcan lid, to cover the entrance.   Keep a tube of silicone by the entrance.   When the dam breaks, get everyone in the hole and use the caulk to seal the lid after you close it.  Bring a bible and a flashlight that's all you will need to ride it out.

It helps to have the tombstone in place before the water rises.

Granted I know nothing of the dam or OP’s location. But we are talking damn failure, wall of water moving at 50+ mph looking for the lowest elevation as fast as it can.

If a damn lets go that boat aint gonna help you.

25 miles? I'd say get a jon boat and call it good. May help, may not. Depends on the topography between you and it.

My uncle was an mine electrician who drove across the dam on his way home from work about an hour or two before it broke and noticed a problem.  (FWIW, this was nothing special. I think hundreds of other people had been noticing problems as well in the days leading up to it and had all been more or less told there was no problem.  He worked for a different company I think and wasn't involved with the maintenance issues there.)

People in the immediate vicinity (mile or so below the dam had no chance.  However (and this is all hearsay), once it broke, people were expecting it and those who lived further up out of the floodplain or on the inner side of a curve in Buffalo Creek (I'm guessing due to inertia the outer side was hit hard and the inner side could be relatively unscathed as the flood wall bounced down the "holler") were able to make phone calls to people downstream.  I was told stories about people getting phone calls then grabbing their kids and running up the side of the mountain moments before their house was swept away.  I think a lot of these stories are probably legit.

I was also told stories about people driving in front of the flood with horns blaring to warn people downstream.  I've no idea how fast those things go and no idea how realistic that is. There could be some truth to that as far as I know, but I also know that people were driving like idiots and warning people 20 miles downstream beyond the flood zone, and some of that probably turned into legend.

My dad was in town about 20 miles below the dam break and saw the people above as well as the first of the debris start to come down the river.  Older LEO friends who were there indicated that it took quite a bit of time to recover all the bodies. and I think more than a few probably were never recovered.  Boats probably became useful after the fact, as the roads had been obliterated, but I think only temporarily as the water receded.

The wall of large debris supposedly stopped on a bridge in Amherstdale.  To this day the old road and old buildings stop there, and upstream of that community most everything is new.  The flood zone strangely has one of the nicest roads in the whole state, then above where the dam was the old road picks up again and is terrible.

But during the event, even if you were sitting in a boat ready to go, the huge wall of telephone pole infused water would've killed you instantly.  I think even one of those orange hurricane boats pictured above would be no match for large debris like that.

ETA:  PFDs will probably help them find your body because they're usually brightly colored.

And I asked the telephone service question too.  I find it hard to believe phone service wasn't interrupted in some places, but I also know truckers were using CB radios and such.  Messages made it in time to warn some people.

ETA2:  25 miles?  You might be good or you might not.  You're either completely screwed or a boat isn't needed.  I don't think there's a middle ground.

25 miles is not far enough to depend on a boat getting you out until the initial deluge is over, when Mt. St. Helen's blew in 1980 it just about took out the 1-5 bridge over the Toutle River which is well over 25 miles away, all of the snow and ice melting in that eruption has been equated to a large dam failure, so no boat going to help in a mess like that.

Good advice here.

Do you have children?

You're better off finding the nearest hill and getting up that mother fucker. Stage a small aluminum boat there if you can, with some flex seal for drunk rednecks that will shoot it between now and the dam failure.

I'd do a 12ft. Jon boat with a 9.9hp in the back and 40lb thrust TM up front. Should get you just about anywhere you need to go in a water's rising situation. Shop around, you can find an older used one in that range.

So you live in Tulsa?

The real answer is to unass the area before the other 400,000 of your neighbors try to do the same.

Sea Kayak with troller motor and batteries. Buy it used. Or go to academy and get an aluminum flat bottom and paddles and a  sturdy push pole. We do floods here like that . A motor becomes expensive, heavy when having to drag the boat and unreliable if not used often as well as getting tangled in all kinds of bullshit.

Would building a tower be a better option?

Reinforce the hell out of it.

Red

get an inflatable