A California National Guard official says they will provide eight helicopters to assist with emergency spillway reconstruction at the nation’s tallest dam located about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco. While the dam itself is structurally sound, last week a hole caused by erosion was discovered on the main spillway.
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However, relief over the end of a devastating four-year drought in California was short-lived after authorities and engineers began carefully releasing water from the dam after noticing that a large patch of concrete had been eroded from the spillway.
Even as the evacuation orders were issued, officials had reason to hope that Lake Oroville would soon begin to recede, due to a drop in the amount of runoff water entering the lake and a dry weather forecast. Other city’s should follow the orders of their local law enforcement.
Residents in Oroville, California as well as neighbouring towns have been ordered to evacuate their homes after a massive hole was found in the emergency spillway of the Oroville Dam.
California Highway Patrol opened southbound lanes of Hwy.
All Butte County offices in Oroville closed Monday. Erin English, of Linda, said she was first told to go to Chico, then because of imminent danger, to go the Colusa Casino Resort.
The emergency spillway suffered erosion and could fail, according to DWR.
“There is still a lot of unknowns”, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a news conference. But a state water official said at a news conference that no fix work was done after officials looked at the flow and available resources. The main spillway is on the bottom and the emergency spillway is above. Just four hours before the evacuation warnings, around midday Sunday, another Department of Water Resources spokesman had said he didn’t anticipate the failure of the spillways.
DWR said the increased flows will further damage the main spillway.
However, latest state figures showed that water levels had fallen to safe levels, meaning that little or no water was likely coming over the emergency spillway.
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“The lower it gets the less pressure there will be”, KCRA meteorologist Mark Finan said.
