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Oroville Dam situation: evacuation order lifted, spillway repair underway

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O

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
Username1198 said:
Damn I lived in Oroville for two years, loved that place. Best burgers around. Hopefully everyone's ok.

Yea I live in Roseville, it's been raining like crazy.
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really? where? i go through oroville semi frequently (and roseville too). the only stop for me in oroville is the disc golf course :)



also, this is crazy
 
D

DUFFMCWALIN

Member
Username1198 said:
Lol Yea totally but I never had a single problem there. Polite neighbors, never felt unsafe, awesome local food, casinos, and I'm a minority lol. It's slow moving around there, very quiet.

Edit it's nice and sunny outside finally a break from the rain.
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Thats good to hear. Maybe its finally getting better. I do enjoy the casinos.
 
C

Corran Horn

May the Schwartz be with you
All these Sacramento area gaffers. Been awhile since I've seen a few in same thread.
We the best norcal.
 
S

Savitar

Member
Maybe it's the old ones rising and digging their way through so they can take over the US.

Let's face it, can only be an improvement at this point.
 
C

callhitman

Member
Nekofrog said:
I'm in yuba city (about 45 minutes north of Sacramento)and I literally work right on the other side of the levee here. I mean literally, there's the levee wall, a very small parking lot, then me. It's pretty much to the tippy top but there are no flood warnings or evacuation notices despite its being at level 2 out of 3 levels.
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I live in yuba city as well. I'm not worried about flooding. Plan as sad as it is has always been to blow the levee on the yuba County side if need be. I remember in 96 or 97 the state very close to blowing it up. bad thing is a lot of development happened since then. Plumas lake development was a bad idea.
 
B

Beatofficer

Member
callhitman said:
I live in yuba city as well. I'm not worried about flooding. Plan as sad as it is has always been to blow the levee on the yuba County side if need be. I remember in 96 or 97 the state very close to blowing it up. bad thing is a lot of development happened since then. Plumas lake development was a bad idea.
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My parents own a house in Olivehurst and their backyard is flooded. My mom is kind of worried about the water levels. The river near my apartment is the highest I've ever seen. There's a river, then the levee, then my apartment complex. My wife keeps joking "at least we live on the second floor." Second floor is not going to help us if we have a breach.

A lot of Gaffers in the Sacramento area, had no idea. Arden Arcade area represent?
 
B

Babyshams

Member
There is flooding due to the rain then flooding due to levee failure or river flooding.

In 1997 Downtown Oroville did flood, but it wasn't because of the river, it was due to the heavy rainfall.

In 1997 150k CFS was put down the feather river, the levees held and were not overtopped. I heard they made upgrades to them after that as well.

To my knowledge no where downstream is at capacity, so they can easily handle the release from Oroville's emergency spillway, especially if the inflow stays under 150k CFS. Remember when the emergency is overtopped, it will match what comes in Like overfilling a bucket, it goes out as fast as it comes in.

At this time I don't see a reason to be concerned from river flooding. Unless debris from using the emergency spillway someone compromised a levee, but they have cleared a lot out and have debris booms set up, the diversion dam will also catch a lot of it.
 
C

callhitman

Member
Beatofficer said:
My parents own a house in Olivehurst and their backyard is flooded. My mom is kind of worried about the water levels. The river near my apartment is the highest I've ever seen. There's a river, then the levee, then my apartment complex. My wife keeps joking "at least we live on the second floor." Second floor is not going to help us if we have a breach.

A lot of Gaffers in the Sacramento area, had no idea. Arden Arcade area represent?
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Feel for you man. Sad thing is in 86 we saw what happens when your area floods. it seems like they didn't learn. Peach tree mall should always be a reminder
 
C

Corran Horn

May the Schwartz be with you
Beatofficer said:
My parents own a house in Olivehurst and their backyard is flooded. My mom is kind of worried about the water levels. The river near my apartment is the highest I've ever seen. There's a river, then the levee, then my apartment complex. My wife keeps joking "at least we live on the second floor." Second floor is not going to help us if we have a breach.

A lot of Gaffers in the Sacramento area, had no idea. Arden Arcade area represent?
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Its nervous. One of the reasons I didnt buy my home in natomas is the worries of flooding...that and I love the folsom area.
 
P

Phreaker

Member
There's an update from this AM and a facebook video that was live (2hrs ago?) after the article on this page from KCRA (NBC): http://www.kcra.com/article/water-begins-to-spill-over-oroville-emergency-spillway/8732032

Coming over emergency spillway now:

oFkxbTt.jpg


Closeup of the upper right of previous pic
9s6oTRG.jpg
 
S

SkyOdin

Member
Chumly said:
Obviously this is just happening but th details are hazy. It's the emergency spillway that is going to fail correct? Does anyone know the ramifications ?
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From the dispatch, it sounds like part of the dam wall might collapse and release 30ft worth of the reservoir.
 
T

Tovarisc

Member
Chumly said:
Obviously this is just happening but th details are hazy. It's the emergency spillway that is going to fail correct? Does anyone know the ramifications ?
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It most likely means that whole hillside worth of ground, trees, huge rocks etc. are getting washed into the powerful stream of water => shit about to get bad at downstream.

SkyOdin said:
From the dispatch, it sounds like part of the dam wall might collapse and release 30ft worth of the reservoir.
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Wot? Dam is breaking and not spillway? Those are different things.
 
C

Chumly

Member
SkyOdin said:
From the dispatch, it sounds like part of the dam wall might collapse and release 30ft worth of the reservoir.
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Holy fucking shit...... that would be a ton of water

To clarify it would be the emergency spillway dam wall and not the main dam right?
 
G

Gallbaro

Banned
Chumly said:
Obviously this is just happening but th details are hazy. It's the emergency spillway that is going to fail correct? Does anyone know the ramifications ?
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Look up small dam failures. Eyeballing the river and spillway height, assuming erosion beneath the spillway is causing it to fail, ~15' wall of water to the smaller dam downriver before the town.
 
H

HTupolev

Member
Chumly said:
Obviously this is just happening but th details are hazy. It's the emergency spillway that is going to fail correct? Does anyone know the ramifications ?
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The "emergency spillway" is just a low artificial lip on the edge of the lake, which water flows over if the lake is too high. It exists because it's far better for a spillover to occur on concrete than dirt, since dirt just washes away if there's strong water flow.
The problem is, only the top lip is concrete; there's no real "spillway" down the hillside, any water that flows over the lip pretty quickly starts flowing onto dirt, meaning that sustained emergency spillover causes lots of erosion. This is why, over the last few days, they've been trying to shore up the hillside with fast-setting concrete; they want the bad erosion to occur as far away from the lip as possible, so it takes a while to work its way up to the lip.

I'd like to think that "failure" could refer to something less bad than the foundation of the emergency spillway washing out (resulting in the lake flowing out purely over dirt), but I'm not sure what that could be.

I hope I'm interpreting this wrong.
 
T

Tovarisc

Member
GoldenEye 007 said:
That account is saying that use of the auxiliary spillway caused immense erosion leading to the current situation. But not sure if they are referring to the dam structure itself, or the structure of the emergency spillway.
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Even if just structure gets washed into stream all that landmass will cause major damage.
 
C

Chumly

Member
HTupolev said:
The "emergency spillway" is just a low artificial lip on the edge of the lake, which water flows over if the lake is too high. It exists because it's far better for a spillover to occur on concrete than dirt, since dirt just washes away if there's strong water flow.
The problem is, only the top lip is concrete; there's no real "spillway" down the hillside, any water that flows over the lip pretty quickly starts flowing onto dirt, meaning that sustained emergency spillover causes lots of erosion. This is why, over the last few days, they've been trying to shore up the hillside with fast-setting concrete; they want the bad erosion to occur as far away from the lip as possible, so it takes a while to work its way up to the lip.

I'd like to think that "failure" could refer to something less bad than the foundation of the emergency spillway washing out (resulting in the lake flowing out purely over dirt), but I'm not sure what that could be.

I hope I'm interpreting this wrong.
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Based off the little information we have it appears that you could be correct. That's how I'm taking it at least that the entire emergency spillway could wash out
 
F

fauxtrot

Banned
Yikes, so far it sounds like just lower levels of Oroville are supposed to evacuate to Chico but they don't know what it could do to the rivers downstream? Anyone near the rivers in NorCal should keep themselves up to date.

I'm here in Sacramento and I'm gonna have a full tank of gas and a go-bag just in case I need to head up towards El Dorado Hills... better safe than sorry.
 
D

DUFFMCWALIN

Member
fauxtrot said:
Yikes, so far it sounds like just lower levels of Oroville are supposed to evacuate to Chico but they don't know what it could do to the rivers downstream? Anyone near the rivers in NorCal should keep themselves up to date.

I'm here in Sacramento and I'm gonna have a full tank of gas and a go-bag just in case I need to head up towards El Dorado Hills... better safe than sorry.
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Yup they are told to come up here to Chico. Girl I'm seeing works at Enloe (local Chico hospital) and is seeing if they need people to come in to work or get ready to go to Oroville.
 
C

Chumly

Member
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html
”It's uncontrolled. It's uncontrolled."

5:30 p.m.

Fearing a gush from Lake Oroville if the emergency spillway collapses, officials are releasing as much as 100,000 cubic feet per second from the main, heavily damaged spillway in a frantic effort to drain the lake below where it spills out the emergency structure when the lake reaches maximum capacity, said Kevin Dossey, an engineer and Department of Water Resources spokesman.

The levee-line downstream channels in the Feather River could hold more than 150,000 cubic feet per second, said Maury Roos, a DWR hydrologist, but he said there's a possibility that a levee could breach from the pressure.

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Roos said that below where the Feather River merges with the Yuba River, levees are rated for a capacity of around 300,000 cfs.

When asked how much water could be released should the spillway collapse, DWR spokesman Chris Orrock said, ”It's uncontrolled. It's uncontrolled."

Dossey said the emergency spillway was rated to handle 250,000 cubic feet per second, but it began to show weakness Sunday at a small fraction of that. Flows through the spillway peaked at 12,600 cfs at 1 a.m. Sunday and were down to 8,000 cfs by midday.

Evacuation center at Silver Dollar Fairgrounds

5:15 p.m.

An evacuation center has been established for Oroville residents at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico, according to the National Weather Service. The address is 2357 Fair St.

Butte County sheriff: ”This is NOT A Drill."

5 p.m.

The Butte County Sheriff' Office released the following statement on Facebook:

This is an evacuation order.

Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered.

A hazardous situation is developing with the Oroville Dam auxiliary spillway. Operation of the auxiliary spillway has lead to severe erosion that could lead to a failure of the structure. Failure of the auxiliary spillway structure will result in an uncontrolled release of flood waters from Lake Oroville. In response to this developing situation, DWR is increasing water releases to 100,000 cubic feet per second.

Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered.

This in NOT A Drill. This in NOT A Drill. This in NOT A Drill.

Chris Orrock, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources, told The Bee the failure happened as the bottom of the emergency spillway began to erode.

”It happened quickly," he said.

Sutter County also put out an alert on Facebook:

We have received information about the potential for increased flows in the Feather River of as much as 100,000 cubic feet per second. We are gathering as much information as possible and will be providing additional information as soon as it is verified.

Officials warn of ”imminent failure" at Oroville Dam's emergency spillway

4:45 p.m.

Officials are warning those living downstream of Lake Oroville's dam to evacuate because of a risk that the dam's emergency spillway could collapse.

”They have what they expect to be an imminent failure of the axillary spillway," said Mike Smith, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. ”What they're expecting is as much as 30 vertical feet of the top of the spillway could fail and could fail within one to two hours. We don't know how much water that means, but we do know that's potentially 30 feet of depth of Lake Oroville."

The Department of Water Resources, which operates the dam, said in a 4:42 p.m. Twitter post that the emergency spillway could fail within the next hour.

”Oroville residents evacuate northward," the Tweet said.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html#storylink=cpy
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Sounds like it is the bottom of the emergency spillway is eroding. That entire wall could collapse (Of the emergency spillway)
 
C

Chumly

Member
One one of the live streams they said the problem is on the far left edge of the emergency spillway. Luckily its not on the tallest right side. Where you see water coming over where it doesn't appear to be a concrete top is the problem.
 
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