UPDATE: Drone video over spillway added.
Collapse of emergency spillway expected, evacuation ordered
Department of Water Resources officials say they expect the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam to fail, and say residents should evacuate northward.
The emergency spillway suffered erosion and could fail, according to DWR. If that happens, the water behind that barrier will comedown the hill and down the river.
Flow through the broken main spillway was increased to 100,000 cubic feet per second in an effort to lower the water level in the lake more rapidly.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office reports helicopters will be depositing rock-filled containers to strengthen the potential failure point.
Bud Englund, a public information officer for the incident, said downtown Oroville and low-lying areas, including residents along the Feather River from Oroville to Gridley, are being evacuated.
Reporter Andre Byik said Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol have converted the southbound lanes of Highway 70 into northbound lanes to expedite the evacuation. Traffic there is still nearly gridlocked.
An evacuation center has been set up at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico. Black Butte Lake west of Orland has also opened up the Buckhorn Campground to evacuees.
Emergency operations centers as far south of Sacramento have been notified, Englund said.
Evacuation orders have also been made in Yuba and Sutter counties.
From ChicoER.com
My local newspaper publishes a scathing editorial of DWR idiocy and mismanagement
Live video here: https://www.facebook.com/KCRA3/videos/10155026580966514/
UPDATE: DWR issued this statement.n their track record so far…not sure its all that reassuring.
OROVILLE DAM, Calif. – The Department of Water Resources has provided an explanation as to why the mandatory immediate evacuations in Oroville and areas downstream are occurring. The concern is that erosion at the head of the emergency/auxiliary spillway issued evacuation orders for residents. The concern is that erosion at the head of the emergency spillway threatens to undermine the concrete weir and allow large, uncontrolled releases of water from Lake Oroville. Those potential flows could exceed the capacity of downstream channels.
To avert more erosion at the top of the emergency/auxiliary spillway, DWR doubled the flow down its main spillway from 55,000 cubic feet per second (CFS) to 100,000 cfs. The next several hours will be crucial in determining whether the concrete structure at the head of the auxiliary spillway remains intact and prevents larger, uncontrolled flows.
Current flows are contained with downstream channels.
Flow over the auxiliary spillway weir began Saturday morning and has slowed considerably. DWR officials expect that flow to stop entirely soon, according to a press release sent at 6:11 P.M. Sunday. This would reduce the erosion on the downstream side of the structure.
DWR officials stress that Oroville Dam itself is sound and is a separate structure from the emergency/auxiliary spillway.
Source: http://www.water.ca.gov/news/newsreleases/2017/021217-pm_release_oroville_evacuation.pdf
UPDATE: Live view from the State Emergency Operations Center
UPDATE: Drne video shot earlier today:
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According to the Sac Bee, the problem is to the left of the spillway, where the parking lot used to be. Also, not clear from the angles that the road has washed away.
Perhaps they are meaning to the left of the main spillway? They may be trying direct people’s attention away from any confusion in thinking the danger is with the original main spillway hole etc.
From Redding Searchlight:
“The most recent inspection of the Oroville Dam spillway did not include a close examination of the discharge channel, according to a state dam safety report.
The last inspection on the Butte County dam, which has developed a hole 30 feet by 200 feet on the spillway, was conducted in July 2015 by the state Division of Safety of Dams.
However, rather than undergoing a close visual inspection, the spillway was checked “from some distance,” the report says.”
http://www.redding.com/story/news/2017/02/09/dam-spillway-checked-distance-last-inspection/97723936/
I take that back: the road appears gone
I certainly hope that ANY loss of life can be prevented, and that damages WILL be minimal. It sure does seem like the understanding. predictability, and management of this event has been very poorly executed.
Everything is OK, Everything is OK, Remain Calm, Remain Calm, OK NOW RUN FOR THE HILLS AS FAST AS YOU CAN……..
Mother Nature sure can be a difficult lady, best to prepare for the worst she can offer and still hope for the best.
This could (but probably won’t) be a lesson for all those folks that think they know everything that will happen in the next 100 years with regards to the weather.
Heck, Ca was supposed to be in a permanent drought according to the computer models….
Maybe the best outcome is if everybody survives with no loss of life, limb, or property AND the “climate science computers” get drowned and can never be started up again…..
Maybe “Moonbeam” can strongly encourage everybody to wash their cars 10 times a day until the snowpack is gone……
Be safe everyone, hoping for the best possible outcome, KevinK
Yes, 30 ft high at left of spillway and probably 60 ft high on the right. But the erosion is occurring to the left of spillway where there is little concrete support. Stopping the overflow will give them time to shore up the left flank.
Somebody did some bad math on not opening up the main spillway more earlier. How does that happen! Was ther some environmental activist concern that slowed the process of opening the gates sooner?
More rain coming this week as I understand it. Snow melt season will turn this into a global warming problem in the next few months. Just sayin……
I’m sure the reason that the emergency spillway was never tested was due to environmental regulations regarding silt. The overflow channels are now clear/clean. When repairs to unforeseen issues with regards to the emergency spillway are completed another controlled test should be done at even higher levels over the top. Of course the primary spillway needs to be fully operational at the time. A controlled risk is much preferred over an uncontrolled disaster.
Anything that has an emergency purpose needs to work in an emergency, not create one.
The only way to test the emergency spillway is to deliberately overfill the catchment. It’s a little like starting a fire in the middle of the building to see if the fire alarm system works. Not the best idea.
If it had been tested and the primary was capable of handling 200,000 cfs the weakness would have been identified and addressed.
It could have been a true disaster if more rain had continued to fill the lake. The fire analogy was weak.
So your solution to testing is to deliberately create an immanent threat to life and property in order to test the emergency spillway??? I am reminded of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he’s testing warheads with a hammer…
They were not using the main spillway at max capacity because it is damaged and erroding. They tried to adjust the the flow to minimize the damage but then they couldn’t keep up with inflow. And it went over the never used emergency spillway. Now they have no choice. Use the main spillway at full flow and drop the level down until the main spillway is dry, Then they canpatch it up.
ossqss “Somebody did some bad math on not opening up the main spillway more earlier. ” maybe they took common core mathematics.
They’re are in real trouble. This is not a late season storm system. WAY more water/storms is heading their way. Add in melt runoff later. This could get really ugly. Hopefully it’s not a complete failure.
See, if there had only been more expansive safe spaces around gender study classes, this never would have happened.
Possible Innundation Areas from Sacremento Bee News twitter feed
https://twitter.com/TroyJBarnhart/status/830968773679030273/photo/1
https://twitter.com/sacbee_news
I believe the inundation graphic is for a complete dam failure.
For those of you unfamiliar with this area,and because there is no scale bar on the map, that’s 35 miles from the dam to the west edge of inundation. And 45 mi N-S, although the area clearly goes further south off the map. That’s a huge area !
Was this spillway damaged previous to the spill and unrepaired, or was it caused by cavitation? If the first, it’s negligence. If the second, then it’s poor design.
Note that the damage is below the point where the slope of the chute steepens. Bernoulli’s principle: when velocity of a fluid increases the pressure decreases.
Below the inflection point is where the velocity increases and thus cavitation is probably the culprit. When cavitation occurs, pockets or bubbles of vacuum are created on the surface of the chute at the interface with the fluid. When the vacuum collapses a water hammer effect occurs which plucks the rock or concrete out in chunks.
The concrete is being ‘jackhammered’ out by the water.
The main spillway looked narmal before they used it. But when the turned on the flow part of it collapsed into a void.Cvitation caused it to quickly grow. By the time they turned off the water they already had a hole too big to fix in the time they had. There is no easy way the inspect for voids under cement.
If the E spillway holds, including the base of it etc., with that much water running over it then a congratulations to the engineers 50 years ago will be in order.
This seems like a badly designed and maintained dam. An emergency spillway should not erode like that, it should be designed to cope with probable maximum flood levels, and why the heck were there trees and brush and power lines across the thing? Evidently they never thought it would happen. And the main spillway has shown seepage problems for several years but they’ve just patched it up. Nobody took the possibility of flooding seriously? Of course not, it’s California!
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/12/oroville-dam-feds-and-state-officials-ignored-warnings-12-years-ago/
Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago
“Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside.
The groups filed the motion with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They said that the dam, built and owned by the state of California, and finished in 1968, did not meet modern safety standards because in the event of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway, then flow down the emergency spillway, and that could cause heavy erosion that would create flooding for communities downstream, but also could cause a failure, known as “loss of crest control.”
end excerpt
The real question here is why they didn’t let more water out of the reservoir in January and December when they had the chance. It looks like they were being way too conservative with the water in recent months and so didn’t have enough space in the reservoir to handle the recent inflows. http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryDaily?ORO
The main spillway can only be used once the water gets within about 50 feet of the top of the dame. They reached that level only a week ago. Keep in mind that the dame was almost empty 2 years ago and mostly empty in september of 2016.
They do have a power house which can drain the lake at any level. However it cannot keep up with the flood level inflows that started in November. In a normal year they leave 1/5 of the lake empty and only fill that after the rains have ended and the snow starts melting.
Oh well that was fast. I see from Jeff C above the water level has dropped and is no longer running over the emergency spillway at all.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html
8:15 p.m.
Lake Oroville water levels have fallen to 901 feet, the level at which water flows over the emergency spillway, state figures from 8 p.m. show.
That means little or no water is likely coming over the emergency spillway – and the threat of collapse due to erosion has diminished said Joe Countryman, a member of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board and a former engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html#storylink=cpy
David DuByne’s video from early this (Sunday) morning eerily accurate. So far.
The live feed reveals a fascinating, though perfectly predictable, example of what an emergency evacuation looks like — total automobile gridlock.
Here on the Oregon coast, if there is a massive earthquake, getting in one’s car to escape the soon-to-arrive tsunami is the kiss of death. It’s by foot or bike (or motorcycle I suppose), or kiss your booty goodbye.
If you’re evacuating from an emergency at the same time as everyone else, you’re in trouble. The trick is to not live where there will be a flood. If you’re expecting a flood, the secret is to get out before they declare a mandatory evacuation, same for a forest fire. We learned a lot from Katrina.
Consider a bug-out bag.
Why not wait for a helo to get you off your roof? Then you can blame Bush for not getting their fast enough.
My tsunami bug-out bag is pretty sweet.
And people ridiculed Noah when he built a boat in his yard.
GFS showing 6-10+ inches for headwaters above dam over next 16 days… even if all is good now , still stormy weather ahead & a lot more rain coming , in terms of maintaining the integrity of this dam. This is going to be an interesting story to continue to follow
Governor Moonbeam saved the money for the HSR project. LOL
IFF the foundation of the emergency spillway has been compromised, its ultimate failure may take days or even weeks, gotta drain the lake to reduce the pressure.
Ain’t outta the woods yet.
Skeptics are once again proven correct and climate obsessed people are proven wrong. The drought was not permanent, and the governments should have stuck to building up infrastructure to protect people, property and environment from floods. So in Australia completely preventable flooding hits due to cliamte obsessed policies. And California may lose a major, not very old, dam due to climate obsessed policies.
Is there anything that climate change obsessed people can’t make worse?
But Hey!! Gov Moonbeam has his carbon tax $billions to spend on a medium speed choo-choo train, a train that no one will ride, from Fresno to Bakersfield.
I hope the train route doesn’t go over any drought-swollen rivers.
The emergency spillway connects to a simple buried barrier near the corner of the parking lot and it is at this joint that water was spilling and eroding the soil that holds up that wall. Had the erosion continued it would have been that wall, not the emergency spillway that would have failed. From images seen on Google images that is all loose filler, not bedrock, on both sides. The entire parking lot would have washed away and the slope would surely have been scoured away to a depth of 10s of feet or more.
….And: If the dam is structurally weak and has to be drained, then the loss of this precious water and the resulting damage the lack of flood control on this river is *all* on the heads of the climate concerned who diverted money from maintenance and improvements of basic flood infrastructure into scams like large scale solar, high speed rail, and wind.
We need money for bullet trains, not damn dams. (sarc)
Moderator, If my earlier post used symbols not allowed please accept my apology. Here it is without asterisks:
….And: If the dam is structurally weak and has to be drained, then the loss of this precious water, the resulting damage to the dam, and the lack of flood control for several years or more on this river is all on the heads of the climate concerned who diverted money from maintenance and improvements of basic flood infrastructure into scams like large scale solar, high speed rail, and wind.
http://i65.tinypic.com/2v3hrbk.jpg
The water from the emergency spillway *will* cut an uncontained channel across that barren hillside to the Feather RIver. It will happen as surely as the snow in the mountains to east will melt.
THis cut will deepen and widen over the next few months as continued rainfall and Sierra snow pack melt will flow into the Lake.
The dam itself is not in danger. But much of the stored water behind the dam could flow south towards Sacramento *if* the erosion channel grows large enough. Big IF.
Because they neglected the Dam’s need for repairs and updates,it cost a lot more money now,trying to prevent the probable disaster, that if they just did their job maintaining it.
It would have been a lot cheaper if they LINED the Emergency Spillway with Concrete, which would prevent back erosion from occurring, to keep the structure in the area intact. Now they might lose a lot more than just the spillway……..,Huge repair bill coming up.
This is classic government screw up.
And added large and heavy riprap. The water should have been slowed and not allowed to channel.
You are assuming they were neglecting maintenance. There is no evidence they were. They were doing their normal visual inspections and saw nothing of concern. Unfortunately no one has X-ray vision which would have been the only way to see void under the main spillway. All dames in the US and much of the world use visual inspections.
WHEN was the last time you did a visual inspection of your homes foundation? Are you sure there isn’t a sink hole under it?
“WHEN was the last time you did a visual inspection of your homes foundation?”
Within the last twelve months, actually, when the cellar flooded to a depth of around six inches during a very heavy storm so I dug a sump and installed a submersible pump to stop it happening again.
In any case, there is a difference between my home being damaged by a sinkhole and a dam failure potentially endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands, especially when the potential for a problem was pointed out over a decade ago.