Thousands Ordered To Evacuate After Oroville Dam Predicted To Fail

5 cubic kilometers of water in the lake. Lets hope it stays there.

https://twitter.com/CA_DWR/status/830972294784655361

Too little, too late.

Those better big some big rocks.

California just can't catch a break.

Sure we are, we're getting a Speed Train because that is more important than a water crisis, whether it be too much water or too little. Thanks to Governor Brown.

Liberals spending Fed Grants (free money, aka other peoples money) will do that.

That particular high speed rail (aka the ''white-elephant-express''...) was previously intended to be the iconic legacy of then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger...

...which then fell into (financial disrepute...) for being predicted to cost some 63 B$, instead of the originally more affordable 42 B$...

...and having an actual maximum allowed speed of 80 mph, instead of the originally-claimed top speed of more than 120 mph...

...which was then politically (re-animated?) by current governor (sic) Jerry (Moonbeam) Brown, Jr. by re-funding an entire portion of the California State government in order to (make it happen)...

Wisconsin turn it down, we saw it as a hook (at least most did), with people saying 'Build it they will come'. And that they would go on it. My response to those, do you ride what we have now? no answer.

Once built and once we were committed, it then turned into a money pit. After turning it down, CA grab the cash.

Wisconsonians have consistently impressed me as be rather logical, and pragmatic, (with the exception of Senator Franken...)

If that's Al Franken, that would be Minnesota. Wisconsin, has been blue for a very long time. Only recently (2010) turning red with Gov. Walker standing up against public servant unions.

He meant the generic Sen. Franken, not the literal Sen. Franken. Very clever use of parentheses you see. Gotta watch them parentheses.

If he mentions the dear senator's name again (the generic one), it'll be in double-quotes, ie, "Sen. Franken." After that, expect square brackets [Sen. Franken], curly braces {Sen. Franken} and finally, registered-trademark symbols ®Sen. Franken®. If it turns out that's not enough, he's got all of Unicode to draw from. In pairs.

Or he could simply take a course in effective communications. What a novel idea.

^™

Grammar, too. (Although some of the mistakes we're seeing around here may be more about alcohol than grammar.)

I duly apologize to all the good residents of Wisconsin, ...

and I sympathize with all the good residents of Minnesota...

Placing rocks on the down-stream side of the dam will only accelerate the erosion rate there even more...

The additional mass of the added rocks may seem like it should stabilize the hillside, but the rocks will also accelerate the velocity of the water by forcing it to increase by going through the interstitial gaps between the large rocks at an increased velocity, thereby causing more erosion per hour, not less, by carrying away the smaller surrounding rocks much more quickly...

But, it probably looks heroic on news clips...

Where are the Angry Birds when you need them?

It better to evacuate the area than to be sorry later.

It's going to take a while before this is resolved, I think I'd find another place to stay if I was an evacuee....The Governor needs to step in and offer safe haven to these people....The national guard should be activated to guard these vacant properties....

130,000 Calif. residents ordered to evacuate below endangered dam spillway

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/12/expected-dam-spillway-fail-prompts-calif-evacuation/97834632/

BREAKING: Oroville spillway collapse threat lessens as 160,000 evacuate, clogging roads

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html

What sort of causal connection might exist between those clauses?

Spillways are antisocial and have an aversion to local populations. Very stressful you see.

Hasta mañana.

Whoever voted that down. please explain how you fancy it was off topic. ¿Or will that be mañana por la mañana?

Seems like I'm doing a lot of counter GA voting to undue pointless unwarranted OT votes as of lately.

An agoraphobic spillway?

188,000 were evacuated.

Why the all-caps title for this post? That is ordinarily viewed as shouting.

I copied it straight from the newspiece.

Google maps helps imagine the levels of concern.

A lot of people live almost directly below the dam, and the stream that flows from the spillover pool goes through the town of Oroville.

The dam is about 300 feet high from the spillover pool to the top of the dam.

Is that 300 a misprint? This dam is supposedly over 700 feet tall.

This brilliant statement was made, Feb. 13 2017.

The acting director of California's Department of Water Resources, Bill Croyle, told reporters that it was unclear what caused the erosion in the emergency spillway.

Bill, WATER caused the erosion in the emergency spillway.

LACK OF WATER caused the drought, and kept the emergency spillway safe all these years, in case that's a mystery, too.

Yeah, I saw that. I guess it must be pretty dark up there where his head is at.

Another thing, they were warned back in 2005 that the spillway was iffy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/13/officials-were-warned-the-oroville-dam-emergency-spillway-wasnt-safe-they-didnt-listen/

Politics only in the breakroom.....How many times do you have to be told? Have you completely lost your mind or what?!

Lyn forgets a lot of stuff, every now and again one has to slap some sense in him.... here's an example.

Interesting how them sneaky Hillaryites engineered this weather to embarrass our newly elected fearless leader.

That would demonstrate a great deal of technical competence actually.

Then it must have been an accident.

I was watching the latest on (God forbid), RT News. Twelve years this damage has been known for, a few times they have completed some cheap repairs and stated they don't need to use the spill way. Built in 1960's and never maintained to any degree of suitability. 28 Authorities have made it clear that the spillways are of no use and dangerous.

12 Years of saving money to endanger 200 000 people, homes and business's. So now the insurance can pay out and still they need to invest more millions of tax payers money to fix and aged spillway. Penny wise, dollar foolish, and your absolute idiot Mr. Billy Braindead does not understand why this happened? Real FW? Does he have more qualified idiots working for him?

Has Mr.Billy Braindead and his merry band of potential murderers done a full and worthy inspection of the dam wall?

I agree, Trump needs to drain the swamp, and kill the parasites off. It is quite despicable that this can be worthy of 1st world country.

Reminds me of the movie, Evan Almighty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnUvSn9pVaA

Living below a dam is a lot of misplaced faith and trust in those who built it and those who are supposed to maintain it.

http://archive.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/the_sayanoshushenskaya_dam_acc.html

I have looked at a bunch of photos of the spillway damage. Not one that I found shows any rebar. Is this a normal practice in this usage to omit rebar?

The scale is important...

From the top photo, the slab looks to be at least 8'' thick, and maybe more...

The bottom photo clearly shows that some (up-sloping) rebar is exposed at the edge, but the longitudinal and the lateral spacing distances are not clearly evident...(might be 6'' or 8'' both ways?...)

Such a slab should have been cast with two curtains, but was probably not designed to resist flexure, due to the total mass of the concrete...

Can't be sure from the photos if there were dowels connecting the slabs...

Looks like the visible hillside erosion starts at the elevation of the original slab failure, and outside of the spillway slab channel...

...and, that it's source was piping erosion progressively removing the earth, from higher up, and underneath the spillway slab, and between the vertical walls of the channel...

Right hand section, next to rock outcrop. Move towards the crack, left lower quad shows 3 rebars protruding and exposed grooves along the edge shows where rebars once was.

(in general) Rebar needs to be placed at 1/3 to 1/2 the depth of a slab to be effective. That's not what I'm seeting. Right at the surface is asking for problems.

it also appears that most or all of the rebar is horizontal to one another rather than laid as a grid.

They may have had better luck without it being there at all.

Both spillways are an abortion. This same part of the chute, where it collapsed last week, was repaired in 2009 and again in 2013. Clearly it has been problematic long before this. Others on-site have observed weeds growing through cracks in the spillway. Cracks. Cracks admit water. Water weakens the soil supporting the chute, turning it into mud. Enough water and you have a slope failure - mud slumping downhill, leaving a void under the chute.

Now release 65,000 cubic feet of water per second over a thin, wide stretch of concrete which has lost its foundation. Four million pounds of water per second and voila! The floor of the chute can't support the weight and collapses into the void beneath.

They sure as hell didn't build that spillway over a void, yet Acting Director of the Department of Water Resources Bill Croyle said yesterday, "Engineers don't know what caused the cave-in." Oh? In a state famous for its mudslides?

Well, Bill, do you suppose it might have something to do with water? When you build something on top of dirt, and that dirt gets waterlogged, it turns into mud. Mud flows, the sort of thing that young children discover when they play out in the rain? What bluddy planet is this guy from?

And of the Emergency Spillway he comes out with another zinger "We don't know exactly why this erosion occurred."

Aliens, Bill. Aliens. From Outer Space? Disguised as flowing water? Seems Bill doesn't know a lot of things.

That roadbed just below the Emergency Spillway temporarily dammed up the water. The water soon spilled over the top and eventually broke through the roadbed itself, causing the water to funnel into the breach, accelerating the rate of erosion at that spot, creating a trench. As the water continued to flow into the trench, the head of the trench crept uphill toward the weir - the sort of behaviour every kid knows who's ever played in the dirt with a garden hose.

Forget his having an engineering degree; he'd have to have ZERO life experience not to know this.

FFS

"We don't know exactly why this erosion occurred.""

I'm surprised he didn't next say, "It's never happened before".

When the repairs are merely cosmetic they aren't really repairs at all. It's a sad state of affairs for sure. Don't forget the millennium tower in SanFran that sinking at a rate of an inch or two each year.. And that's a new construction of >645'! Why? Skimping on the concrete pilings.. I see a common thread there.

If the weir was constructed as poorly as the spillway they were undoubtedly lucky as can be that the water didn't flow long enough to undermine it. How many more hours could it handle? not too many I'm guessing.. yeesh, I caramba and holy cow.

The best way to insure future failure is to assume (it) currently is too (big) to fail...

Yep. But not only, big things tend to fail big.

That's why I put ''big'' in parentheses for all you who can only take things strictly literally...

...and not generically...

Funny, that's exactly why I left the parentheses out. And you didn't catch that?

I could ''lead a horse to water'', but I know that I can't make it think to drink...

Photoshop?...

Chalk that up to a 'no'

I have to admit, there are some liberal art students that have talent...

Yes, but they seem to need to view their work from their own, limited, ''point-of-view''...

Seems like their art professors aren't giving them anywhere near enough homework for them be able to invest so much time on such visual (''gimmickry'') ?...

It is faddish....

Reminds me when I was 18-19 years old, there was a bowling alley that had a bar and had live bands there on fridays and Saturday nights.

In the bar, they had a 4 foot wide by about a 6'-8" mirror that was framed in like a doorway... now that was entertaining art when you watch people thinking they're going into another room and walk into the mirror.

I was thinking about checking out that room, until I saw someone walk into the mirror.

Sad pair.

lol,... hope you check the doorway next time,... to make sure it is a doorway and not a mirror.

An interesting update I just received, but I am sure most are aware of this already.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/damage-to-californias-oroville-dam-takes-down-800-mw-of-hydropower/436240/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202017-02-15%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:9101%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive

Buying power off the grid is reasonable just due to cheap NG. But I'm sure this will make prices jump.

Last I heard that order was recinded.

Made, rescinded, could be made again. But hey, it's a fluid situation.

Yep, just a matter of time before an official stated this.

"Crisis at Oroville dam was 'new, never-happened-before event,' top official says "

Sir, that link is as useful as a chocolate fireguard. It does not allow one to pass the Los Angeles Times "Give us Money" logo. No subscription, no news, I guess.

This link may be better for some.

http://www.onenewspage.com/n/Americas/75e3pimm0/Crisis-at-Oroville-dam-was-new-never-happened.htm

ok,... I just replied no, (not interested) and it continued to the link.

But, your link is more direct... sorry I ruffled your feathers... may have limitations on the country your from.

Still, a foolish statement from an official none the less.

Many of the comments have gotten seriously off-topic. What we need is some up-to-date news--something beyond what TV's talking heads are reporting.

That is, lake levels have been drawn down; but more rain, lots more apparently, is forecast. What are their plans? And anything else of significance?

Many of the comments have gotten seriously off-topic.

That's pretty common...

And if not for the media,... without actual being a part of the team there, what or how do you purpose in doing it.

The latest up date from beyond Usa is that their is concern now for the dam wall. Concern that the dam will burst and all those folks will be swimming by days end.

The costs it will be to fix the damage and the dam has been lower, 15%, and still is being lowered to allow for the next inrush of water. That was the latest news from the land of milk and honey. 27 mins ago.

Their is big concerns and not much action taking place, it seems.

Other than closing off the break and lowering the level to reduce the stress on the embankment??, what else can be feasible done.