California Governor Jerry Brown Asks President Trump for Help

by AWR HAWKINS
12 Feb 2017

On Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown sought federal help from President Trump by asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to declare “a major disaster” in California in light of the damage done by recent storms.

The East Bay Times reports: “Brown formally requested the declaration for the series of storms striking the state between Jan. 3 and Jan. 12.” He noted that “heavy rains, winds and snow, particularly in Northern California, left eight people dead and knocked out power to an estimated 1 million Californian homes and businesses.”

Brown’s request comes as Gov. Brown has challenged the Trump administration on climate change, immigration, Obamacare, and other issues.

Other Democrat officials in California have been open about their refusal to comply with Trump administration orders regarding illegal immigration. San Francisco’s police chief, sheriff, and mayor all made clear they would not enforce Trump’s immigration order, long before the order was taken to court. The San Francisco Police Department went so far as to cut ties with an FBI counter-terrorism task force in order to prevent officers from being involved in action that targeted illegals.

And California’s highest law enforcement agent, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, has been very open about his determination to fight Trump’s policies as part of the larger effort to retain sanctuary policies that harbor illegal aliens in the state.

But Gov. Brown would like some federal funds to help out in the short term, so he is asking the Trump administration for help.

Notably, Gov. Brown also used his “State of the State” address earlier this year to welcome Trump’s commitment to infrastructure spending.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/...nt-trump-help/

I would like to say...Jerry.....better not..)

End Sanctuary Cities could be a good move...

Oh puleeze. You had some snow and rain and you, the 6th largest economy in the world, can't get your power back on without FEMA??!!! Honestly?? What a bunch of beggar cry-babies. You want to defy US taxpayers? Then tell your power companies to get the power back on, tell your cities and counties to hire some illegals and go clean up the mess. You want to DEFY OUR LAWS that get US citizens killed and robbed and unemployed? Really?? Then you go take care of yourselves.

I wandering how long time can CA survive....brainwashing thinks, we doing well..) Guess....a long time ago.

Restore the drivers licenses to illegals data bank you destroyed - sure it is retrievable. Half of the dls in CA went to illegals last year. Co-operate with US laws of the land instead of hindering them; jeopardizing your state's citizens by surrounding them with millions of illegals.

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.

Gaping Hole in Spillway for Tallest US Dam Keeps Growing

• By DON THOMPSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

OROVILLE, Calif. — Feb 9, 2017, 9:11 PM ET

A gaping hole in the spillway for the tallest dam in the United States grew Thursday 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.

The lake is a central piece of California's government-run water delivery network, supplying water for agriculture in the Central Valley and residents and businesses in Southern California.

After years of drought Northern California has endured several months of exceptionally wet weather. Oroville and other lakes are brimming and have begun releasing water to make room for more runoff.

The initial damage to the spillway occurred Tuesday, about 3,000 feet downstream from where water enters from the lake. The water flowing out of the hole quickly turned brown with mud as it consumed trees and soil before rejoining the main channel below in a massive confluence wave that sent up clouds of mist in the tree-lined canyon.

The lake was rising at a half-foot per hour Thursday as the inflow peaked at 121,000 cubic feet per second, officials said at a news conference about a mile from the spillway.

They were releasing water at about 40,000 cubic feet per second.

That's not enough to keep the lake from continuing to rise, officials said, but is expected to keep them from having to use a nearby emergency spillway that has never been used since the dam was dedicated in 1968, when Ronald Reagan was governor.

As a backup plan, state workers and contractors were pulling out trees and bushes by the roots from the emergency spillway to keep them from floating downstream.

If the department can't keep using the eroded concrete spillway, Lake Oroville would naturally flow over an ungated concrete crest into the mostly unlined emergency spillway once the reservoir reaches 901 feet elevation. The reservoir came within a foot of flowing over in January 1997.

Meanwhile, workers at a state hatchery for California's native Chinook salmon loaded up all the millions of baby salmon into tanker trucks Thursday afternoon to try to save them from the mud, concrete chunks and other debris coming their way from the crumbling spillway.

The hatchery, on the Feather River, is vital to the survival of chinook salmon, whose numbers have dwindled during the drought. Hatchery managers planned to take the tiny young salmon to another holding point they hoped was far enough away.

The department continued to operate hydraulic power plants both at the base of the Oroville dam and downstream, Thomas said, with contingency plans in place to protect them. If they have to be shut down, which is not anticipated, he said state power managers would draw from other sources on the interconnected electrical grid.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/n...torms-45384192

Mandatory Evacuations Ordered for Parts of Oroville Due to ... - Fox40

fox40.com/.../evacuations-ordered-for-parts-of-oroville-due-to-hazardous-situation-d...

27 mins ago - OROVILLE -- Immediate evacuations have been ordered for ...Evacuations Ordered Due to 'Hazardous Situation' Developing at Oroville Dam Emergency ... The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for possible dam failure. ...

Oh geez, what a zoo!!

Evacuations Ordered Due to ‘Hazardous Situation’ Developing at Oroville Dam Emergency Spillway

POSTED 4:36 PM, FEBRUARY 12, 2017, BY GENNY MCLAREN, UPDATED AT 04:35PM, FEBRUARY 12, 2017

OROVILLE — Immediate evacuations have been ordered for residents of the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream, according to officials with the California Department of Water Resources.

Officials say a hazardous situation is developing with the Oroville Dam auxiliary spillway. The operation of the auxiliary spillway has led to severe erosion that could lead to a failure of the auxiliary spillway.

Officials are anticipating a failure of the auxiliary spillway at Oroville Dam within the next 60 minutes.

Failure will result in an uncontrolled release of flood waters from Lake Oroville.

The DWR is increasing water released to 100,000 cubic feet per second.

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

The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for possible dam failure. Areas affected include Oroville, Palermo, Gridley, Thermalito, South Oroville, Oroville Dam, Oroville East and Wyandotte.

Residents should evacuate in a northward direction, toward Chico.
The flash flood warning is in effect until 4:15 p.m. Monday.

---

http://fox40.com/2017/02/12/evacuati...ency-spillway/

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

http://media.breitbart.com/media/201...ss-640x480.jpgRich 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

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/d44b...2271001-vs.jpg

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

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b0ca...-635156718.jpg
(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.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/7055...-AFP-LO4LZ.jpg
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/

Quote:

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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!