Oroville Dam Spillover

DUN24

Skeptical of the Spectacle
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Well, the tallest dam in the country has been overflowing for the past couple days... Evacuations ordered tonight.

It's been pretty crazy to watch the past couple days. The erosion has been slow but consistent. They cut a channel where you see the blue path in the picture above but it is starting to run down where the orange arrow is at too. Pretty damned scary because there is no secondary concrete wall like there is immediately downstream of their makeshift channel. It's a parking lot for a boat launch/park and a dirt ledge. If it continues the whole lake is gonna drain.



I've heard the spillover has slowed, hopefully it isn't too late.
 
Hopefully they will understand the power of water. The only way to repair a breach in a damn - or a spillway - is to reduce the water level - then fix it - just my humble opinion.
 
Hopefully people take the evacuation seriously the Johnstown flood in PA in the late 1800s after a dam burst killed over 2000 people
 
Worth knowing that the internet experts have been advising an evac for days ... while the gov't busied itself evacuating ... a fish farm. Yup, told people to stay in their homes ... and rescued baby fish.
 
Worth knowing that the internet experts have been advising an evac for days ... while the gov't busied itself evacuating ... a fish farm. Yup, told people to stay in their homes ... and rescued baby fish.

Yeah that does not shock me.
Hopefully they will understand the power of water. The only way to repair a breach in a damn - or a spillway - is to reduce the water level - then fix it - just my humble opinion.

Last night they said the lake wasn't at full capacity anymore... So that's good but more rain is on the way.
 
The trouble isn't what you see ... it's what you can't see. All that water pounding into the ground underneath is weakening the dirt embankment underneath that. And that's what's holding up the big slab of concrete a little to the right.
 
Oroville vice mayor: ‘There’s a degree of frustration’
2:00 p.m.

Oroville vice mayor Janet Goodson is marooned in Red Bluff after evacuating Sunday night.

She said she respects and understands the sheriff’s call for continued evacuations, and says that safety is the foremost issue, but she said she also feels frustrated.

“To be honest with you, there is a degree of frustration,” she said.

Asked whether it was a mistake not to have done more to improve the spillway earlier, she said she prefers to look forward

“We are where we are,” she said. “We can learn from mistakes, things we failed to recognize. We have to move forward in a collaborative fashion and make sure this does not happen in the future. This is a learning experience for us.”


Tony Bizjak


Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132379669.html#storylink=cpy

Man, doesn't that just sum it up. I'll wager she's not loosing any pay or paying out of pocket for a dingy motel room.
 
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