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

Gerard · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:03

Forum mod;30498794 said:
This comment and the colours in your sig go very well

According to the forum software thats green white and orange.

Diddums · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:05

Probably our crap monitors tbh. Still, I am amused by this, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

scorza · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:25

norm;30498702 said:
...
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.
...

The "emergency spillway" looks to me like nothing more than a bit of hillside designated the spillway. If that gets washed away then there's nothing to hold back the water :eek:

Django x2 · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:52

Evan Almighty?

Hades · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:56

Damn.

The Funktopus · 14 Feb 2017 at 04:23

Django x2 said:
Evan Almighty?

Evian almighty surely?

G-MAN2004 · 14 Feb 2017 at 04:42

So, just a hole halfway down in the spillway then? Surely the whole hill would have to crumble away first before anything major could occur? I think I'd stay in my house...

Energize · 14 Feb 2017 at 05:00

Must admit the whole situation is rather exciting if it fails it'll be like a movie!

Diddums · 14 Feb 2017 at 07:45

G-MAN2004 said:
So, just a hole halfway down in the spillway then? Surely the whole hill would have to crumble away first before anything major could occur? I think I'd stay in my house...

The problem is that once the ground is saturated with water, the foundations holding it all together will crumble like a dry sponge. That's when things get risky.

Avenged7Fold · 14 Feb 2017 at 08:36

G-MAN2004 said:
So, just a hole halfway down in the spillway then? Surely the whole hill would have to crumble away first before anything major could occur? I think I'd stay in my house...

I think its more that the spillway guided the water toward the river where the the momentum would be reduced by the raised part of the spillway to prevent any major erosion. The broken spillway risks the ground being eroded and a new water path created to somewhere that risks homes or lives and is near impossible to drain.

joeyjojo · 20 Feb 2017 at 14:25

Orionaut said:
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....

Not sure about that - the current wet season is an all time record according to

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ergencies-like-oroville-dam-in-a-hotter-world

Northern California is in the midst of its wettest rainy season on record – twice as wet as the 20th century average, and 35% wetter than the previous record year. It proved to be almost too much for America’s tallest dam to handle. Water managers were forced to use Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway for the first time ever, which then began to erode, posing the threat of a failure and catastrophic flooding of nearby towns.

Also

Research has shown that conditions that create both wet years and hot dry years in California are becoming more frequent. California’s intensely wet 2017 is a prime example of weather whiplash, as the state is just now emerging from a 5-year drought that was its most intense in more than 1200 years.

I.e. it's probably more to do with the extreme (now more common) weather than water management, although of course the latter is an important tool going forward.

CosmicClown · 20 Feb 2017 at 14:46

This is Breitbart everyone.

Fake news.

Why you all picking and choosing when to believe a report from Breitbart?

Alt-Right progenitors, no?

Ahh only when they criticize Islam are they fake news.....

Avenged7Fold · 20 Feb 2017 at 15:26

Media outlets have to put out some real news once in a while or their normal readers wouldn't buy the crap they normally shovel, heavily laden political bias.

Some like Breitbart, have a mach larger 'crap' to 'real story' ratio.

They dont do it with just Muslim related stories but yes that seems to be a topic favourite of theirs with that story about a mob of thousands of Muslims setting fire to the oldest church in Germany at new years being a very recent false report.

Also, we can see from live TV and other channels that this was going on, so its hardly picking and choosing to believe Breitbart. Just happens that OP fav outlet is Breitbart, are we all suppose to fervently deny any claims regardless of what they are just because we dont like Breitbart reporting ethics? Of course not, that would make us close minded.

MissChief · 20 Feb 2017 at 15:51

I have a friend who is a supervisor in California and is dealing with this situation right now. Having asked him recently about it it's not quite as bad as breitbart says but it is certainly causing them some concern.

esoteric · 20 Feb 2017 at 17:10

I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with Frank Castillo and Joe mentioned it was raining really heavy and at some point the ceiling started leaking. Was very bizarre when it happened because I was playing Nioh and just listening and not watching but when it happened I'm thinking wtf is that noise so I turn to see what's going just as Joe took his headphones off and is like wtf is that"

scorza · 20 Feb 2017 at 17:22

Not sure why people are having a go at me for my source of this news story, there was serious concern about the possibility of the dam failing when I posted the OP. Glad to hear that this possibility seems a bit more remote today. Seems that some people are just so narrow minded that they can't hear anything outside their own echo chambers. For the benefit of those people here's a different source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...f-Collapse-Evacuations-Ordered-413543783.html

Amp34 · 20 Feb 2017 at 23:56

CosmicClown said:
This is Breitbart everyone.

Fake news.

Why you all picking and choosing when to believe a report from Breitbart?

Alt-Right progenitors, no?

Ahh only when they criticize Islam are they fake news.....

Scorza put a link to Bretibart in the OP, doesn't mean people read it.

It was on most of the other news outlets too. For example I read the BBC articles on it (amongst others).

This thread is about the event, not a news story by a specific publisher.

StriderX · 20 Feb 2017 at 23:59

MissChief said:
I have a friend who is a supervisor in California and is dealing with this situation right now. Having asked him recently about it it's not quite as bad as breitbart says but it is certainly causing them some concern.

Now the main issue is that, is this person just saying that after decades of ignorance from Washington on infrastructure problems that this person has come to have lower standards?

Amp34 · 21 Feb 2017 at 00:01

Unfortunately infrastructure isn't sexy and it's difficult to get funding for it.

And as was mentioned elsewhere people would rather spend money building new things (and getting the credit for it) rather than the even less sexy situation of repairing existing infrastructure.

Werewolf · 21 Feb 2017 at 01:05

Amp34 said:
Unfortunately infrastructure isn't sexy and it's difficult to get funding for it.

And as was mentioned elsewhere people would rather spend money building new things (and getting the credit for it) rather than the even less sexy situation of repairing existing infrastructure.

Aye, from memory Obama tried to get funding to repair a lot of it and was lucky to persuade Congress to pass a bill for about half of what was needed (I think he asked for 700 billion over a number of years and was lucky to get 300 billion).