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130, 000 Calif. residents ordered to evacuate below endangered dam spillway

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Roads leading out of Oroville, Calif., were jammed with traffic 
Sunday evening as more than 130,000 people were ordered to 
evacuate the area due to the possibility of failure of the 
alternate spillway at Oroville Dam, authorities said.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said during a news conference 
Sunday night that he had no choice but to order the evacuation.

“I didn’t have the luxury of waiting to see if all was OK. We 
need to get people moving quickly and to save lives in case the 
worst case came to fruition,” Honea said.

“This is a very dynamic situation. This is a situation that 
could change very, very rapidly,” he said.

“We recognize that this has caused a significant problem with 
traffic, in terms of exiting the area.”

State route 70 northbound, which runs past Oroville, was 
gridlocked as of 7:20 p.m. PT. Highway 99, an alternate north-
south route eight 10 miles to the east, and state route 162 
heading east, away from the Feather River, were jammed as were 
nearby surface streets, according to satellite feeds from Google 
Maps.

Highway 49 in Nevada County was turned into one-way traffic, 
according to Caltrans.

Oroville Police said its department arranged a medical 
evacuation for a man in a wheelchair in a house on Robinson 
Street, a few blocks from the Feather River, which runs below 
the endangered spillway.

Oroville residents were ordered to evacuate Sunday afternoon. 
The evacuation order was extended to include Marysville and Yuba 
County around 5:45 p.m. PT, according to Caltrans.

In a post on its Facebook page, the Butte County, Calif., 
Sheriff’s Department ordered an “immediate evacuation from the 
low levels of Oroville and areas downstream.”

Police said a “hazardous situation is developing” with the 
Oroville Dam auxiliary spillway, in which severe erosion could 
lead it to fail, resulting in an “uncontrolled release of flood 
waters from Lake Oroville.”

California Department of Water Resources officials had decided 
to use the emergency spillway to take pressure off the dam's 
regular spillway, which developed a giant crater last week, 
Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight reported. That crater had 
been growing daily, so to take pressure off the spillway, the 
state began using the emergency spillway, but that also became 
compromised.

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.

Residents of Oroville, located about 65 miles north of 
Sacramento, were ordered to evacuate northward, toward Chico, 
Calif. As of 6 p.m., Oroville police radio said there were 
"still a few stragglers" downtown but most people were gone. 
They also called for expanding the evacuation area to include 
area around the high school.

Honea wasn’t sure when residents would be able to return home. 
“We have to assess the safety of the spillway before we let the 
public back in,” Honea said.

Lake Oroville is one of California’s largest man-made lakes, and 
the 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.

The dam was built in 1968. Following heavy rains this winter, 
water on Saturday overtopped the emergency spillway for the 
first time since its completion, The Sacramento Bee reported 
Saturday.

Bill Croyle, acting director of the Department of Water 
Resources, said the dam itself is not threatened, but that the 
crisis won’t be over soon, since Northern California is on pace 
for its wettest winter ever. He said an estimated 2.8 million 
acre-feet of snow blankets mountains above the dam, putting more 
strain on it in months to come.

“Our next 60 to 90 days will be critical, how we route this 
(snow) runoff through this reservoir,” Croyle told The Bee. 
“There’s a lot of snow up there.”

In a tweet, the California Department of Water Resources late 
Sunday said it planned to use helicopters to drop rocks to fill 
in the gouge in the auxilliary spillway and stabilize it.

Michelle Grandinetti and her family quickly left their home, 
headed for family in Elk Grove, southeast of Sacramento.

“We took enough clothes for three days, our children, seven 
total that are still with us, our two dogs and food for them!” 
Grandinetti wrote in a Facebook message to The Bee. “We just 
moved here a few months ago and haven't ever had to deal with 
this! Everyone is leaving! All the stores are closed! Just got 
on the freeway and the river is only feet away!”

Erin English of Linda, Calif., told the Record Searchlight she 
got a robo-call telling her to evacuate and get to higher 
ground. She immediately called 911 and dispatchers at first told 
her to go to Chico, then said she might not make it there before 
water came through. They told her to go to Colusa Casino, about 
an hour's drive west.

She headed out with her husband, two children and her dogs. They 
didn't have time to grab anything from home, she said.

"I'm scared to death. I've never been through anything like this 
before. I pray for the safety of everybody here."

Kevin Carroll of Marysville, Calif., said he was dubious about 
the evacuation order, but he obeyed it. He and his wife gathered 
up clothes and their dogs and left. "My wife said go," he said. 
"The river is right on our back door."

But he said he didn't expect Marysville to flood. "I'm not 
saying it won't. There's a lot of room in that river right now," 
he said.

"It can save lives or be a waste of time. I hope for the best 
for the evacuees. Be safe."

Two tribal casinos in Oroville were trying to calm customers as 
they dealt with evacuation orders, and employees who picked up 
the phone had little time to talk.

“We’re really rushed right now,” said an employee at Feather 
Falls Casino & Lodge, about five miles south of the Feather 
River. “We’ve got the evacuation orders.”

At Gold Country Casino and Hotel, an operator said the phones 
“have been ringing off the hook” because of the emergency 
evacuations. That casino sits about three miles east of the 
river.

Kirsten McFaul, a student at Butte College and an Oroville 
native, said she drove to Sacramento when the college canceled 
classes on Friday. Yesterday, residents learned that the dam was 
at capacity and had overflowed into the spillway.

McFaul had been planning to drive home Sunday, but after the 
evacuation was announced her family left immediately and drove 
to Paradise, a town about 20 miles north of Oroville. They’re 
waiting there until it’s safe to return.

“We have been in fear of flooding since Friday, when we were 
told to prepare for evacuations just in case,” she said via 
Twitter. “We’ve had some (evacuations) uphill for fires but it 
was never a huge deal. We’ve never been evacuated like this in 
my lifetime.”

Contributing: Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, and The Associated 
Press. Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/12/expected-dam-
spillway-fail-prompts-calif-evacuation/97834632/

--
More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of 
California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the 
massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse 
Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — 
could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.

Those agencies included the Metropolitan Water District of 
Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people 
in Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas, along with the State 
Water Contractors, an association of 27 agencies that buy water 
from the state of California through the State Water Project. 
The association includes the Metropolitan Water District, Kern 
County Water Agency, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and 
the Alameda County Water District.
 

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130, 000 Calif. residents ordered to evacuate below endangered dam spillway "But But Sanctuary Cities! Disaster Declaration! Federal Funds! FEMA! Trump!" <morons@sfchronicle.com> - 2017-02-14 07:13 +0100

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