Oroville Dam Disaster in Northern California

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Fox News, Current News updated 2/13/17

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/13/at-least-188000-urged-to-evacuate-as-concerns-over-california-dam-increase.html

CALIFORNIA
At least 188,000 urged to evacuate as concerns over California dam increase

Lake Oroville, about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, is one of the state’s largest man-made lakes. Sunday’s evacuation order came after engineers discovered a hole that was eroding near the top of the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway, sparking fears it could fail.

Water levels at the dam were dropping on Monday. California Department of Water Resources officials say flows into the lake were just under 45,000 cubic feet per second. Outflows remained high at nearly 100,000 cubic feet per second.

Still, state officials said they would have to inspect the erosion scar on the spillway themselves before determining the next steps. What's more, forecasters have predicted another round of rain Wednesday could soak the area and put new pressure on the dam and spillway.

The cities of Oroville, Gridley, Live Oak, Marysville, Wheatland, Yuba City, Plumas Lake and Olivehurst were all under evacuation orders. Emergency officials stressed that the dam was structurally sound, Fox 2 reported.

The “entire” California National Guard was on alert to help in case of flooding, according to a Pentagon spokesman. Some 23,000 members of the Guard were “prepared to respond” should the dam break, Capt. Jeff Davis said.

Hundreds of cars carrying panicked and angry people were sitting in gridlocked traffic Sunday.

"The police came and told us to evacuate," said Kaysi Levias, who was with her husband, Greg, at a gas station as they attempted to get out.

Officials warned residents at the time that the spillway could fail within an hour.

Evacuation orders have been issued for nearly 200,000 people living downstream of the Lake Oroville dam in Northern California.

"I'm just shocked," Greg Levias said. "Pretty mad."

"Not giving us more warning," said Kaysi, finishing his sentence.

What they couldn't fit they piled as high as they could in their downstairs Yuba City apartment and joined the line of traffic attempting to leave the city where they had moved just three weeks ago.

“This is very serious” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Scott McClean told the SF Gate as he was stuck in massive amounts of traffic. “I’m just trying to get through traffic.”

The erosion at the head of the emergency spillway threatened to undermine the concrete weir and allow large, uncontrolled releases of water from Lake Oroville, the California Department of Water Resources said. Those potential flows could overwhelm the Feather River and other downstream waterways, channels and levees.

Unexpected erosion chewed through the main spillway earlier this week, sending chunks of concrete flying and creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole. Engineers don't know what caused the cave-in, but Chris Orrock, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources, said it appears the dam's main spillway has stopped crumbling even though it's being used for water releases.

Late Sunday, officials said the evacuation orders remained in place despite the fact water was no longer spilling over the eroded area.
Butte County Sheriff Koney Honea said engineers with the Department of Water Resources informed him shortly after 6 p.m. that the erosion was not advancing as fast as they thought.

"Unfortunately they couldn't advise me or tell me specifically how much time that would take so we had to make the very difficult and critical decision to initiate the evacuation of the Orville area and all locations south of that," he said. "We needed to get people moving quickly to save lives if the worst case scenario came into fruition."

Honea said there is a plan to plug the hole by using helicopters to drop rocks into the crevasse.

The California Department of Water Resources said it was releasing as much as 100,000 cubic feet per second from the main spillway to try to drain the lake.

Click for more from Fox 2.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.





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7new replies
kenyaiscalling
kenyaiscalling 11 minutes ago
Who's Gov Moonbeam going to call once Mexifornia secedes from the US? George Soros? Meryl Streep? George Clooney?

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mghpmh
mghpmh 11 minutes ago
Think California will ask for Federal assistance?  Sanctuary cities may be done for.

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sourpickle
sourpickle 12 minutes ago
So....does this mean everyone can water their lawns this summer?

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loknlode
loknlode 12 minutes ago
Why wasn't the dam inspected and shored up during all of those years of extreme drought ? Why do we always wait until it's too late before we address these potential problems ? Or was it because we wasted our resources on illegal immigrants ?

Oroville Dam Video as of 2/12/17 by California HP:

And if anyone here follows Dutchsinse he is not perfect but pretty accurate with his method he comes up with something scary for Oroville.

Who is paying for these designer rock bags??



Keep in mind that the repairs needed for this dam have been argued since 2005, that is, for the past 12 years.

The politicians involved don't have the kajones to rebuild infrastructure because they're too busy arguing over global warming and the stupid bullet train to nowhere. Oh, and "the fish" (Governor Moonbeam's code language for the unimportant Delta Smelt, which nobody uses for anything, like bait or canning, and which would not be missed even by predator fish if they went extinct, because other fish don't like to eat Delta Smelt).  Stupid politicians have been diverting water into the ocean for many years with the excuse to keep "the fish" (delta smelt) alive because they thrive in the transition zone where fresh water meets salt water.

In 2005 the need to protect this emergency overflow spillway with concrete lining was shelved because it was not a politically attractive topic.  IOW it didn't attract liberal votes, and in California you need liberalism to get votes.  There were ground fissures becoming visible at the time but they were ignored.  The fissures got worse in 2011 and still, it wasn't a hot enough topic for popular votes so no money was appropriated.

California is still in a drought, especially Southern California, where underground water tables are less than half capacity, and at current rates it will take another 2 or 3 years of this kind of rainfall to recover aquifer reserves.  So where does all this nice Oroville water go that is in danger of causing destruction?  Do they pump it out to Owen's valley where it can go to Mono Lake (which is still empty) and on to the Mulholland Aqueduct to Los Angeles or to the Central Valley where farmers' crops are wilting for lack of irrigation? No, it's being sent out to sea, of course, because they're in too big of a liberal quagmire, I mean, hurry.

This gaping hole in the emergency spillway is being dubbed not dangerous to the dam.

Bull crap.

Engineers are afraid to say what I'm about to say because they don't want to scare people.

All three structures are EARTHEN dams, the Oroville dam itself, the spillway (which is clad in concrete but is dirt inside that) and the emergency spillway (which is not clad with concrete at all, but SHOULD BE).  The emergency spillway has not been used before, in the 60-year lifetime of the Oroville dam, but it is being used now because of serious latent defects in the main spillway, which had large chunks of concrete falling off of it this past week.

If they keep on gushing out water like this, even backing up the sink holes with bags of rocks, eventually the earth dam will be undermined. Water soaks slowly into the dirt, but it does soak, and it WILL turn into mud.

Nobody is talking about earthquakes.  

An astrologer on the radio last week said we have a very high degree of a devastating earthquake in California during the next 2 weeks, based entirely on the astrological alignment of the planets.  He said this  before the Oroville dam problem erupted with full volume.  Whatever that's worth.

Heaven forbid there is an earthquake in the meantime, because that's when saturated soil endures LIQUIFACTION.  I was within earshot when freeway bridge columns that were founded in an aquifer during the Northridge Quake had liquifaction under them and the bridge collapsed. BOOM! BOOM! BOOOOMMM!! like bombs dropping.

What they don't bother to mention in the article above, nor in most news releases, is the fact that the Oroville dam, the largest dam in the continental United States, is not a concrete dam but an earthen dam.  That means it's a pile of dirt.

So what keeps it from washing away??  Good question.  When dirt gets wet, it turns to mud and mud flows just like water does, downstream, albeit more slowly.  So to keep the earthen dam from getting soaked like mud, there is a vertical wall of CLAY in the middle of the dam, which is piled up there in layers when the dam is built.  It amounts to a gasket, kind of like piston rings or the zip seal on a plastic bag. The clay membrane keeps the dirt dry DOWNHILL from the clay, but not UPHILL (between the clay and the water body being retained). The dirt dam on the lake side of the dam is always wet and saturated and of no structural importance other than to protect the clay membrane that seals in the water. This pile of dirt must be engineered to withstand large earthquakes since the dirt on the water side could slough away underwater if it's shaken up by a large quake.

The clay is fragile and expensive so it's not necessary or appropriate to make the whole dam out of clay. Plus, clay E-X-P-A-N-D-S when it gets wet (called "expansive soil" not expensive soil), and therefore the dirt surrounding the clay membrane must be engineered to absorb this movement.

When cracks appear at the base of an earth dam, it's time to pay attention.  That happened 12 years ago in Oroville and nobody took action in a timely manner.

When you combine heavy rain with large fissures and sink holes in the spillway with pressure from the lake behind the dam with an EARTHQUAKE, you have a recipe for disaster.

There could be millions of people whose lives are at risk downstream from this enormous lake.

Here is an older video that came out before the evacuation but it shows a lot of data.

At minute 5:20 they have a cross section of the dam showing two impervious zones (the clay internal wall I mentioned above) and a lot of other features.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/eIQpbylBtbg[/youtube]

Oroville Dam is the tallest dam in the United States.

The earthen dam design means the toe of the downslope is absolutely vital for a safe structure, and that toe is exactly what has been getting erosion from the emergency spillway runoff.

You can see a parking lot above the dam that is submerged under water. That lot was dry just two days ago. There is more rainfall coming, and combined with the incursion of inlets feeding into the lake from canyon runoff upstream, the water coming into the lake is going to be coming in much faster than this damaged spillway system is capable of letting excess water escape.

This sounds like a disaster in the making even without any earthquake.

Let's go WAY back, to Governor Ronald Reagan and the construction of the Oroville dam in his term.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/p_5udzKfLQM[/youtube]

California's majestic beauty is extraordinary, it is no wonder it's the most populous state, but for years, whenever there's some tragic event that happens in California, I always think of the queers and their rainbow, that God made the rainbow as His promise that He would never again punish the world by flooding it - how the queers and perverts parade around with God's rainbow as a symbol they defiantly use to proudly provoke God to His face with.

God keeps warning and warning and the queers just keep getting worse and worse. May God grant them the reward they deserve and spare the rest!


 

 

Yes, I saw that, still, I think He is giving warnings. All God needs to do is move his wrath about 120 miles south west.
 

Latest:   People that evacuated can come back to their homes. The Authorities
says that the dam MAY NOT be in danger of collapse despite the rains that
already moved in.  
MAY NOT is not 100% sure.

Oroville Dam is nearing collapse, Eyewitness Paul Preston Interview on the
Common Since Show

Posted 2-14-17