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130,000 California Residents Ordered to Evacuate Below Endangered Dam Spillway

Takyon writes:

Roads leading out of Oroville, Calif., were jammed with traffic Sunday evening as more than 130,000 people were ordered to evacuate the area due to the possibility of failure of the alternate spillway at Oroville Dam, authorities said.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said during a news conference Sunday night that he had no choice but to order the evacuation.

"I didn't have the luxury of waiting to see if all was OK. We need to get people moving quickly and to save lives in case the worst case came to fruition," Honea said.

"This is a very dynamic situation. This is a situation that could change very, very rapidly," he said.

Gaping Hole in Spillway for Tallest U.S. Dam Keeps Growing

Fnord666 writes:

A gaping hole in the spillway for the tallest dam in the United States has grown and California authorities said they expect it will continue eroding as water washes over it but the Oroville Dam and the public are safe. Earlier this week, chunks of concrete flew off the nearly mile-long spillway, creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole. Engineers don't know what caused cave-in that is expected to keep growing until it reaches bedrock. But faced with little choice, the state Department of Water Resources resumed ramping up the outflow from Lake Oroville over the damaged spillway to keep up with all the runoff from torrential rainfall in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Officials said the critical flood-control structure is at 90 percent of its capacity. But the dam is still safe and so are Oroville's 16,000 residents. "The integrity of the dam is not jeopardized in any way because the problem is with the spillway and not the dam," department spokesman Eric See said.

Located about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, Oroville Lake is one of the largest man-made lakes in California and 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam is the nation's tallest.

Source:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a25170/gaping-hole-in-spillway-for-tallest-us-dam-keeps-growing/

Oroville dam in California fails, mandatory evacuation of all residents ordered.

morpheus writes:

The Sacramento Bee reports that the emergency spillway of Oroville dam on lake Oroville in CA is in danger of imminent collapse. Lake Oroville is the largest drinking water reservoir in the US.

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

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