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    • Evacuations ordered over concerns at California dam system

    Evacuations ordered over concerns at California dam system

    (CNN)At least 188,000 people have evacuated from several Northern California counties after damage to a spillway at the Oroville Dam.

    The dam, which is the nation's tallest, remains intact. But the emergency spillway, which guards against the overflow of the dam when water levels are high, was eroding Sunday.

    The damage prompted a mandatory evacuation for cities and counties near Lake Oroville. In the worst case scenario, one official said, an uncontrolled release from the dam could send a 30-foot wall of water downstream.

    "I'm not going to lift the evacuation order until I have a better idea of what that means and what risk that poses," Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said in a news conference late Sunday night.

    Officials are waiting until daylight Monday to better assess the situation and decide when it's safe for residents to return, Honea said.

    California Gov. Jerry Brown issued a state emergency order to help local authorities with the situation and evacuations.

    The dam has two spillways -- the primary and the emergency spillway -- which are channels to leak water out of the lake to prevent overflow. And right now, both have problems.

    Last week, the primary spillway was damaged by erosion, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Images of the structure showed a massive hole in the lower part of the channel.


    That hole can't be fixed at the moment. It's 250 feet long, 170 feet wide and about 40 to 50 feet deep, said Bill Croyle, acting director of the Department of Water Resources.

    "You don't throw a little bit of rock in it," he said.

    Of the two, the emergency spillway is a last resort. At Oroville Dam, the emergency spillway is only used if water levels reach 901 feet in elevation. It hasn't needed to be used in its 48-year history -- until this weekend.

    Why evacuation order was made

    A light flow of water began washing into the emergency spillway Saturday and the volume of water began to increase. Around 3 p.m. (6 p.m. ET) Sunday, authorities learned that the dam's emergency spillway was also eroding, Honea said.

    The erosion of the emergency spillway is dangerous because "when you start to erode the ground, the dirt and everything else starts to roll off the hill," said Kevin Lawson, California Fire incident commander.

    "It starts to undermine itself. If that is not addressed, if that's not mitigated properly, essentially what we're looking at, is approximately a 30-foot wall of water," he said.

    cnn.com

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    13th Feb 2017 4ursurvival

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