Oh, geez: Oroville CA: evacuate RIGHT NOW

[Recursion]

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/12/oroville-residents-told-to-evacuate-spillway-failure-imminent/

An emergency evacuation has been ordered for Oroville-area residents by the state Department of Water Resources, which predicted that the auxiliary spillway at the Oroville Dam will fail Sunday night.

The department issued the evacuation advisory around 4:40 p.m. Sunday, just four hours after holding a news conference during which they said they didn’t anticipate such problems.

Sorry: on the off chance someone has missed this: the spillway will fail in the next few hours. Get the fuck out of the valley, right now. Worry about where you're going later, get up a slope. Now.

[braddy]

1. How could the earlier assurances have been so crazy wrong, I wonder who is responsible for that

dishonest public confidence in the dam's safety.

[Talk Is Cheap]

2. This is an unprecedented occurrence...

This is the first time the emergency spillway has been used.

But, what this does tell us is that our infrastructure needs attention countrywide.

[braddy]

3. Officially they were telling us that it was safe, clearly they were just making it up instead of

having some technical knowledge for those assurances.

[Talk Is Cheap]

6. When was that?

[braddy]

7. Yesterday and early today, here is an example.

"Oroville Dam's emergency spillway used for first time amid rising waters; officials say public safe"
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oroville-spillway-20170211-story.html

[Talk Is Cheap]

8. As I said, this is an unprecedented event.

Sorry that Mother Nature interfered with the perfect world.

You live in California?

[braddy]

9. The experts said it was safe, the public was to assume that was based on facts, it evidently wasn't.

[lapfog_1]

4. I listened to a smart person for DWR

earlier... who predicted this exact thing. The emergency spillway was going to overtop and release water. The spillway has never been used.

His prediction was that the earth in the spillway would erode rapidly, even gouging deep holes into the spillway path. But he added that underneath that dirt was granite rock... which would not erode all that quickly (very slowly in fact), and that while the spillway would be damaged, it would not fail.

The current reports are that the erosion has slowed dramatically, the main spillway is now at 100K CFS (100,000 cubic feet per second) and that this might cause some minor flooding downstream on the Feather River, but it would stay 7 feet below flood stage.

Someone else in DWR might have been a little too cautious and predicted the failure of the emergency spillway (within the hour!) a little soon.

OTOH, if the geology of the granite underpinnings is not as stable as the first guy thinks, ordering an evacuation downstream is not out of line.

[trueblue2007]

5. hubby watching on the laptop right now, just horrible. POOR CALIFORNIA. my heart goes out 2 You