After Mass Evacuation in Oroville, PG&E Urges Customers: ‘Make an Emergency Plan’

State and local officials tried Tuesday to both reassure jittery residents that they’re now safe and defend the decision to disrupt life in multiple communities downstream of Oroville Dam with an emergency evacuation.

Water gushes from the Oroville Dam’s main spillway in Oroville, Calif. on February 14, 2017. Then PG&E removed power lines from transmission towers below the dam’s auxiliary spillway to ensure safety should the towers themselves destabilize due to water flow.

The State Water Contractors and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California-licensees of the dam-argued in a 2006 filing that the emergency spillway was fine as it was, calling the flood control arguments “misdirected and unsupported”.

A snapshot of Oroville Dam’s inflow and outflow figures during heavy rains on February 9-10.

A total of three counties, Butte, Sutter and Yuba, had communities under the evacuation order. They provide emergency assistance required to protect the public’s health and safety and to meet immediate human need. However, he stressed that “the integrity of the dam is not impacted” by the damaged spillway.

“I would think they could probably sustain a couple of inches of overflow on that but I don’t know how much more”, Bingham said.

Kenzie, who is less than a year old, was having a tough time coping with the evacuation while she stayed with Archer Houston, who said the kangaroo is used to sleeping in bed with her owner.

Honea said there was a plan to plug the hole by using helicopters to drop rocks into the crevasse.

Oroville is the tallest dam in the US that was commissioned in 1962 and was ultimately finished in 1968.

Others remained, waiting to hear the official news.

To relieve pressure on the dam, more than 2800 cubic metres of water per second were being released into the main damaged spillway, almost double its usual capacity.

“Once you have damage to a structure like that it’s catastrophic”, Croyle said.

A California sheriff says the water level at the lake behind Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest, is low enough to accommodate an expected storm, but residents returning home should be prepared for “the prospect that we will issue another evacuation order”.

“It would take rain and snowmelt together but mainly rain”, said Brett Whitin, a hydrologist with the California Nevada River Forecast Center.

Bill Croyle, acting director of the state Water Resources Department, agreed that the situation had been stabilized and said crews were making “significant gains in removing water from the reservoir, which. can further reduce the risk to our situation”.

One would think routine inspections were conducted on the tallest dam in North America to protect hundreds of thousands of people living below but apparently officials believed it would last forever. Meanwhile, the state is working to shore up the earthen spillway with rocks and sandbags in preparation for more rainfall this week.