California's Oroville Dam 'near failure', ~180k people ordered to evacuate

scorza · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:09

http://www.breitbart.com/california...cuations-ordered-oroville-dam-spillway-fails/

The California Department of Water Resources issued a sudden evacuation order shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday for residents near the Oroville Dam in northern California, warning that the dam’s emergency spillway would fail in the next 60 minutes.

The Oroville Dam is the highest in the nation.

Pretty crazy stuff - I remember when the dam breaks in Superman, freaked my nut out then and now it may happen for real :eek:

Some scary pictures and footage out there, I'll just post this one:

Diddums · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:11

Uh oh, that doesn't look good

Dis86 · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:11

In my expert engineering opinion...is broke.

Efour · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:14

Where i live there are loads of hydroelectric dams. We have a escape plan etc sent to us every year.... If the main one breaks upstream and takes out the others on the way, in 3 hours my Town will be under 14 meters of water for a few Days... lol

Ive seen much worse Pictures than the OPs one i thought the main wall was crumbling?

EDit oh no its just the emergency spillway at work... THats a lot of water!

Troop · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:23

Been watching it going on since Thursday, scary stuff for the people below the dam.

Lots of info/vid/ongoing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3j82YEsTo

Tom0 · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:25

The media is gushing all over this story.

joeyjojo · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:27

Very freaky. Several solid years of 'severe drought', then enough snow and rain for the first ever emergency overflow. :eek:

moogle · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:33

Funny enough, John Oliver on Last Week Tonight did an episode about this (well the infrastructure in the USA in general), a good watch if you're interested.

Quartz · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:34

scorza;30498349 said:
Some scary pictures and footage out there, I'll just post this one:

That'll buff right out.

Clum · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:36

So it's not the actual dam wall that's damaged, just the spillways? Not going to be a superman level failure then.

Orionaut · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:42

joeyjojo;30498412 said:
Very freaky. Several solid years of 'severe drought', then enough snow and rain for the first ever emergency overflow.

There has been some suggestion that the high level in the dam are because of a change in priorities in the water management program forced on the dam operators as a result of pressure from environmentalists to more closely follow the rivers pre-dam seasonal flooding behaviour.

IE water has been held back, that in the past would have been released far earlier in the season.

This is California after all, priorities and all that....

Jono8 · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:45

They need Evan to build an ark

Sliver · 13 Feb 2017 at 11:50

If it breaks it will be epic. I just hope nobody gets hurt. I bet some people will choose to remain in their homes come what may.

Syla5 · 13 Feb 2017 at 12:04

Clum;30498445 said:
So it's not the actual dam wall that's damaged, just the spillways? Not going to be a superman level failure then.

If the spillway goes, then the damage to the land mass downstream of the dam can be heavily compromised, if you check out some of the pictures you can see that the land adjacent to the spillway is getting washed away rapidly, but in a catch 22 they cant shut off the spillway as that will push the dam to failure. Damned if they do, damned if they don't

Orionaut · 13 Feb 2017 at 12:12

Sliver;30498501 said:
If it breaks it will be epic. I just hope nobody gets hurt. I bet some people will choose to remain in their homes come what may.

There is around 5 Billion tons of water behind that dam.

Sliver · 13 Feb 2017 at 12:18

Orionaut;30498598 said:
There is around 5 Billion tons of water behind that dam.

That's going to create one big puddle!

norm · 13 Feb 2017 at 12:40

As I underdtand it the failure in the main spillway (above) is not the critical concern it's the emergency spillway which they thought could collapse.

I wouldn't want these guys job.

Clum · 13 Feb 2017 at 12:48

Airdrop the national stockpile of tampons into the dam?

Gerard · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:00

/Cue Trump telling us he builds tremendous dams. :rolleyes:

Might as well go the whole hog and blame Mexico as well.

Diddums · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:00

Gerard;30498789 said:
/Cue Trump telling us he builds tremendous dams.

Might as well go the whole hog and blame Mexico as well.

This comment and the colours in your sig go very well