Thread: California Governor Jerry Brown Asks President Trump for Help

Yeah, everybody needs to run for the hills, FASTLY!! I think the dam is going to break.

UPDATE

FEB. 12, 2017, 7:21 P.M.

Roads jammed by mass evacuations below Oroville Dam

Thousands of people evacuated below the Oroville Dam, jamming roads.

TV news footage showed long delays out of Oroville, with officials urging people to move to higher ground. Gas stations were also packed.

Evacuation centers were set up in Chico.

Butte County officials said they evacuated jail inmates due to the situation.

Just saw a picture of this on CNN. I don't see anyway that dam can hold all that water, way too much weight and pressure. That dam is going to break. They should have opened the spill valves at a much higher rate much sooner.

They're way behind the curve now.

Fox News is reporting that helicopters are flying in the dark to try to drop boulders into the spillway to fill up the hole where the collapse was. Major concern dam is in jeopardy. More rain expected next Thursday.

Oroville Dam Holds as 188,000 Evacuate Ahead of 7 Days of Rain

Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

by CHRISS W. STREET 13 Feb 2017 Newport Beach, CA38


The Oroville Dam crisis temporarily subsided Sunday night, as 188,000 residents downriver were evacuated, but the crisis will return with northern California expecting seven straight days of warm rain from another Pineapple Express beginning Wednesday evening.

The water level in Oroville Lake topped the 901 foot crest by up to 4 inches beginning Saturday, sending 500,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water over the earthen dam’s mile-long emergency spillway, which had never been activated since the dam, America’s tallest, went into operations in 1968.

Over the next 24 hours, erosion tore a gash in the center of the emergency spillway, threatening a collapse of the spillway. At 5:20 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, an emergency evacuation was ordered for 12,000 residents in the City of Marysville and another 35,000 in Butte County. The order spread to 65,000 from Yuba County City and another 76,000 from Yuba County as officials warned that portions of the unstable embankment might collapse.

According to Paul Preston of Agenda 21 Radio, who has been reporting live on scene, the a level of panic was spreading on Saturday afternoon that a 60-foot-high section of the mile-wide emergency spillway was in danger of a general collapse, which would unleash a 10-foot-high wall of water and threaten the safety of up to one million residents downstream.

Breitbart News reported on February 9 that with water flowing into Oroville Lake at the rate of 83,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), officials opened the cement-gated primary spillway to release water at the rate of 35,000 cfs. But the flow surged to 55,000 cfs as a hole roughly 250 feet long, 170 feet wide and 50 feet deep hole opened up in the spillway, sending massive amounts of water and chunks of concrete surging down the Feather River.

Engineers from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and collaborating agencies announced they were able to slow water surging down the primary spillway to 20,000 cfs.

But with the 3,537,577-acre-foot reservoir filled to 101 percent of capacity, officials assured the public that water would flow evenly over an emergency spillway on the south facing side of the dam.

Law enforcement sources told Preston the National Guard out of Redding was being mobilized for a disaster deployment.

The crisis situation has temporarily faded with the primary spillway jettisoning water at a rate of over 100,000 cfs, bringing the lake height down to the point at which water has ceased overflowing the emergency spillway. Helicopters have been deployed to drop huge boulders into the crack in the emergency spillway, and clear skies are expected over the next three days.

But beginning on Wednesday evening, another moisture-laden “Pineapple Express” storm system will arrive to hammer northern California’s lower elevations with 7 straight days of rain, while the Sierras expect 11 straight days of rain and snow beginning on Thursday.

With the heaviest snowfall in 22 years, the Sierra snow pack is at 150 percent of its 100-year average. And with temperatures climbing to a high of 49 degrees in Tahoe on Wednesday, 4 degrees above average, snowmelt is expected to be heavier than usual.

Preston reports that the general consensus from the emergency response teams is that the situation will remain stable into Friday. But with accumulating rain and snowmelt causing another overflow of the weakened emergency spillway by late Friday, there is a significant risk of heavy damage to the Oroville Dam spillways.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/...rain-approach/

I truly waiting for his resignation...the dam is his fault...

20% of dams in populated areas lack emergency plan

USA TODAY NETWORK Benjamin Spillman, Jill Castellano and Tracy Loew, USA TODAY Network Published 7:29 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2017 | Updated 3 hours ago

Aerial footage shows water gushing down the spillway of Oroville Dam during the same week the spillway collapsed because of damage, causing at least 188,000 people to evacuate the area. USA TODAY NETWORK


(Photo: Elijah Nouvelage, Getty Images)


As the nation's 84,000 dams continue to age, a growing number of people downstream are at risk, experts say.

That's not only because of older infrastructure but also because of population growth around some of the dams.

More than a quarter were developed primarily for recreational purposes, according to National Inventory of Dams data from 2016.

"The nation’s dams are aging, and the number of high-hazard dams is on the rise," according to a 2013 report from the American Society of Civil Engineers. "Many of these dams were built as low-hazard dams protecting undeveloped agricultural land. However, with an increasing population and greater development below dams, the overall number of high-hazard dams continues to increase."

That problem was highlighted this week as nearly 200,000 people evacuated an area near California's Oroville Dam, about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco. California water officials were worried that erosion they discovered Sunday at the top of its emergency spillway could send a 30-foot tall wall of water down the Feather River and through the Northern California cities of Oroville, Yuba City and Marysville.

► Related: New storms could imperil Oroville where 200,000 were evacuated

The population of Oroville, the county seat of Butte County that's less than 10 miles downriver from Oroville Dam, has more than doubled since the dam was completed in 1968.

Most U.S. dams were completed between 1950 and 1980. A small fraction of dams, 2.8%, were built before 1900.
More than 4,000 dams have been built since 2000, accounting for 4.5% of all U.S. dams.


A playground is seen Feb. 13, 2017, submerged in flowing water at Riverbend Park in Oroville, Calif. as the Oroville Dam releases water down its main spillway about 10 miles up the Feather River. (Photo: Josh Edelson, AFP/Getty Images)

The latest data in the dams inventory, which the Army Corps of Engineers compiles, shows almost 15,500 dams across the USA are characterized as high hazard, meaning at least one person could die if the dam were to fail.

Among those high-hazard dams, nearly 1 in 5 lack an emergency action plan, a document dam owners maintain that includes critical information such as emergency contacts, details about the dam and an inundation map.

“If you have a good emergency action plan, you are going to reduce the consequences if the dam fails,” said Lori Spragens, executive director of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The average age of the United States' 84,000 dams is 52, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers' report.

“We can’t seem to get the federal government or the states interested in funding the most fundamental part of what makes us go, which is infrastructure,” Spragens said. “It just needs so much more attention at a national level.”

In seven states, more than half of the high-hazard dams are operating without emergency action plans, according to the National Inventory of Dams:

• In South Carolina, it’s 96%.
• Mississippi, 88%
• Rhode Island, 82%
• Alabama, 79%
• New Mexico, 61%
• Florida, 58%
• North Carolina, 57%

Only three states — Louisiana, Maine and Tennessee — and Puerto Rico have emergency plans in place for all the dams with high-hazard potential.

In California, the problem is especially widespread.California has more than 1,500 dams, according to the National Inventory of Dams database. Of those, 52% are considered high hazard, the fourth highest of any state.

► Related: What is the Oroville Dam and what will happen if its spillway fails?

Nationwide, 17% of dams are considered high hazard.

In California, more than a third, 36%, of the high-hazard dams don't have an emergency plan, which would kick into gear if the dam appeared to be a threat. Oroville Dam does have an emergency plan.

“We can’t seem to get the federal government or the states interested in funding the most fundamental part of what makes us go, which is infrastructure.”

Lori Cannon Spragens, Association of State Dam Safety Officials

Nationwide, 31% of high-hazard dams lack an emergency plan.

Almost two-thirds of U.S. dams are privately owned. Among the rest: Local governments own 20%; states, 7%; public utilities, 4%; the federal government, also 4%; and the remainder don’t have their ownership listed.

Understanding the level of risk associated with the nation’s dams can be difficult.

States have oversight of about 7 in 10 of the nation’s 84,000 dams. The federal government through the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamationand the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissionregulates others.

More than three quarters of the high-hazard dams are state regulated, according to Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Of those, about 1 in 7 are in need of remediation.

“That is one of our biggest national challenges, to try and get these dams inspected more regularly,” Spragens said. In 2015, states spent $49.4 million regulating and inspecting more than 81,000 dams, including the high-hazard dams under state regulation.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency operates the National Dam Safety Program, which is an attempt to support standards for dam safety. The program supports research and training related to dam safety and inspection, including grants to states to improve their own regulatory systems.

► Related: Dam's eroding spillway further proof that northern Calif. drought is over

But the FEMA program doesn’t provide enough money for states to enforce the regulations or inspections.

“A lot of states are behind on that schedule. That is a huge challenge right now across the country, having enough inspectors doing their jobs,” Spragens said.

People who want to learn more about dams in their own communities will have a difficult time tracking down critical data. Security concerns following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted restrictions on the availability of hazard ratings and conditions of specific dams.

“That is not going to be easy to find,” Spragens said. “You obviously don’t want people panicking, but it is very understandable: We want people to know.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...plan/97870636/

Originally Posted by Beezer

This is NOT a FEMA disaster. The Dam has not broken. California has BILLIONS for illegal aliens. Take it out of your illegal alien fund. Take it out of the Bullet Train Fund to nowhere! Take it out of Eric Holder's salary! LOL

Not one dime to California.

Right on Beezer!