Watching the Weather Nation channel, they’re saying the emergency spillway has eroded so much that they’re saying that that part is about to fail. Evacuation orders have been given for Oroville, and other towns downstream. Telling people to evacuate northward towards Chico.
Godspeed folks…
Calling our friends and family… this is insane.
It is a very grave situation. what are they going to do now? And the water will spill out somehow eventually, will that undermine the earthen dam? and there is a gigantic storm coming.
This is getting crazy. The traffic trying to evacuate is wild. Lets hope they get this under control as the next series of storms approach.
I live about 20mi north and above the dam on a ridge. Here is the latest I’ve heard, they are dropping boulders with helicopters onto the spillways, ( that would be like peeing on a forest fire) The lake level has lowered but there is still about 2 inch’s of water going over the emergency spillway and the regular (damaged) spillway is going about full blast. They still expect the emergency spillway to fail, they just don’t know when or if.
I just got back from the gas station to fill up and went to the grocery store to get supplies just in case the worst happens…This quiet little town is just in gridlock with people getting to “high ground”
Looks like the main spillway is taking a lot of pressure off the auxiliary one. But I have to wonder, if not now then the upcoming storms will surely test it to the extreme 
It’s that plus all the stress that is happening now to rivers and levees down stream. Everyone needs to keep their fingers crossed and pray that the aux/emergency spillway holds
Everyone needs to understand, at this point the main dam has NOT been compromised in any way.
speaking of traffic, here in vegas, a few drops of rain will cause mini-catastrophe’s. Too many vehicular accidents as the locals seem naive to the tried-and-tested warning that is ‘slippery when wet’
Now is not the time to be asking, but from afar I am wondering if a lack of maintenance on this essential piece of infrastructure is the issue or if it is the result of faulty engineering or carelessness in the original construction. If you take shortcuts on setting concrete its strength is compromised- in NY, special inspectors make sure that the concrete is continually wetted down with large public projects- without the inspectors, contractors used to often skip it. Faulty work may take several years to reveal itself.
Sometimes it’s a money thing and everyone has a budget.
There is little political reward for supporting infrastructure maintenance. You may get recognition for proposing and passing popular projects, but maintenance requires tax money for essential work the public cannot see- until there is a disaster. When infrastructure fails politicians rarely pay a price because it is due to failures so many years past. We need to devise a way to overcome this construct. For a such a wealthy nation we do a poor job on this.
You know that infrastructure has a lower priority here than in most other parts of the developed world , be it trains, roads, bridges or dams. The difference one notices when traveling abroad is quite remarkable. On the other hand, if there is a disaster, the money spigot will be opened for this and other infrastructure work. Trump is desperate to find shovel ready jobs.
I myself feel failure is inevitable when you try to harness Mother Nature, it never works out. It’s our arrogance, like somehow we can change the weather, with what we do or don’t do. We are a very arrogant lot, the human race. The earth doesn’t care, it’s going to do what it does despite us.
Where I live used to be the bottom of an ocean, change is constant.
Good luck with it,
@alan
Here in Michigan we handle infrastructure just as poorly, no probably worse.
The well is dry. 66 trillion dollars worth of dryness. And we have nothing to show for it either!
If we each pay 206 thousand dollars we can pay it off.We are in trouble just about as deep as you can dig, we have. Shame on us! Drain the swamp. But that is for another discussion.
they can always print more…
LOL! I wish that worked, it just devalues the money.Well we should be able to help here, but we do need to fix this debt problem too.
Good luck all, I hope damage is minimal. Please keep us updated.
I found an old menu from the early 1900’s.
Bagel, cream cheese, lox, and a coffee… 5 cents.
Today here in New York City that would be about $12.00
Today, the actual bagel, cream cheese, lox and coffee are the same as in 1900.
Since the bagel etc are the same the only thing that has changed is the value of the 5 cents.
That is what happens when you just print more of the stuff.
Mike
But incomes changed too)
well, the money is devalued. The money supply increased by a factor of four under Obama, and the federal debt doubled. it doubled under Bush too, and you can expect a similar increase during Trump. I note that Trump’s meeting with airline execs a few days ago contained words about bullet trains in the US. Following that, the stocks of Japanese bullet train manufacturers shot up.
If I have learned anything from spending a lot of time with bankers and finance people and papering their deals, it’s that you should never believe a number without substantial context.
While sometimes things happen that no one ever anticipated, we shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders when massive public works fail in spectacular fashion. In these instances it’s almost always the case that someone cut corners or that at some level of responsibility the people managing this didn’t do something they should have done.