The damaged spill-way
Officials have been inspecting America’s tallest dam in a desperate effort to stop a devastating 100-foot tsunami from being unleashed, as 200,000 people remain under evacuation orders across California despite water levels dropping overnight.
Authorities have warned that in the worst case scenario a complete structural breakdown at the emergency spillway of Oroville Dam would unleash a torrent of water that would engulf the city of Oroville within an hour.
The ensuing flood from the 770-foot dam would catastrophically put Oroville and several other low-lying communities along the Feather River under 100ft of water.
The potential disaster is the result of massive spikes in water levels as a result of snow and heavy rain after years of drought, and damage to the primary and emergency spillways at the dam. Officials first noticed a massive hole in the dam’s spillway last week.
U.S. president, Donald Trump, is yet to comment on the potential disaster.
And amid the frantic evacuations, it emerged overnight federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns 12 years ago about the precarious state the dam – which was built between 1962 and 1968.
The dangerous situation sparked the California National Guard to put out a notification to all 23,000 soldiers and airmen to be ready to deploy if needed.
The last time an alert for the entire California National Guard was issued was the 1992 riots.
And early on Monday morning, relieved officials said that water had stopped pouring over the dam’s emergency spillway after they essentially rose 50-feet over a few days.
They announced that although not nearly out of the woods, the situation had improved.
However, another storm is predicted to hit the area by Friday, putting more strain on the dam and potentially sparking a catastrophic failure.
On Sunday afternoon, Lake Oroville – one of the state’s largest man-made lakes – had water levels so high that an emergency spillway was used Saturday for the first time in almost 50 years.
The evacuation was ordered Sunday afternoon after engineers spotted a hole on the concrete lip of the secondary spillway for the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam and told authorities that it could fail within the hour.
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Trump wouldn't twitt about such because it won't boost his PR in anyway, he prefers twitting about so called crowds who lined the streets waving at him.
Several thousands were evacuated as a precautionary method to safe lives.