The 1964 Christmas Flood and the 1996 floods devastated many areas of Oregon and Washington, but these floods would have been much worse if the Corps hadn't been able to store water behind their dams as it poured into the uncontrolled rivers and tributaries. The Corps’ existing and under-construction reservoir storage projects in the Willamette River Basin during the 1964 flood prevented over $510 million in damages in 1965 dollars. The 2014 value of that flood management effort is almost $3.9 billion. Since their completion, this system of dams has cumulatively prevented more than $20 billion in flood damages, including more than $2 billion during the flood of 1996.