Residents in Oroville, California and surrounding areas have been ordered to leave their homes immediately as parts of the Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the US, are experiencing severe structural collapse.
Damage to the main structure of the dam is expected within an hour. After this structure is destroyed, over two cubic miles of water will be released. The flood will wipe out an entire region from the face of the earth.
The Oroville Reservoir is located 240 kilometers from San Francisco. The lakeside city of Oroville is home to 16,000 people. The dam in question is the tallest in the United States, at 235 meters. The reservoir is also a major source of water for California, Central Valley agriculture, and state industries.
An old video clip demonstrating what the Oroville spillway should look like in normal operation:
This is how it looks now:
Whereas before the water extinguished its energy by flowing smoothly from a height of 770 feet, today, after a spontaneous damage to the spillway about a week ago
due to a series of downpours flooding the region, the lower part of the structure looks like a seething stream of water with flying blocks of reinforced concrete, eroding the surface to the very rocks.
Evacuation zone maps:
Here is what American bloggers think about the situation:
Flyingcuttlefish: A few years ago, I spoke with a volunteer lifeguard in North Carolina. He secretly, afraid that someone would hear us, told me that they were conducting special exercises in case a dam was destroyed upstream from a large settlement. He even gave me an approximate date when this might happen. The words of the rescuer were not a surprise to me and only confirmed my suspicion. The fact is that it somehow strangely coincided and turned out that the army of engineers of the United States built more than 50% of their dams on the sites of active underground faults and in those places where large groups of the population were gathered down the river. But what if the dams were so built on purpose - in anticipation of future events, natural disasters? Or even artificially triggered disasters, such as devices such as HAARP. If a flood kills a lot of people, destroys the local economy - HAARP can affect not just the weather, but politics.
Jim Stone: All records of the dam's maintenance show that until recently the spillway was in excellent condition. I have analyzed many hours of video from the dam surveillance camera, and in some frames it is noticeable that pieces of the concrete deck seem to bounce high in the air. That's why I think the spillway was blown up. Or is it some kind of deliberate sabotage. Obviously, I have no evidence of deliberate digging under the drain or traces of explosives, but you will agree - this is a completely rational explanation. Even engineers are terribly surprised how this happened. And that means a lot. Therefore, I have doubts that everything will end well. If the dam collapses, it will be double Niagara Falls. Or even Niagara times four.
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Oroville
Live broadcasts from Oroville webcams in real time. Popular webcams are shown first. Oroville is a city and the county seat of Butte County, California, United States. Oroville was founded as a navigation point on the Feather River to supply gold during the California Gold Rush. Initially, the settlement was named Ofir City. The name was changed to Oroville in 1854 when the first post office was opened there.
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Neighboring Yuba City was also completely evacuated and its streets were eerily empty. All schools were closed, many of them hastily converted into temporary shelters for refugees. Intelligence agencies even removed 500 prisoners from the Butte County Jail.
All this reminded me of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which to this day operates in some regions of Belarus and Ukraine.
The local farms, flooded with water, also stood silent, like in Hollywood zombie movies. Let's not forget that all three counties (Butte, Yuba and Sutter) that have been ordered to evacuate the population are located in the agricultural region of California, heavily damaged by five years and accompanying fires. Therefore, the news of a possible flood stirred up a large part of the population, which knows firsthand what happens when it gets into dry soil a large number of moisture in a short period of time. After all, we ourselves have recently witnessed numerous landslides and sinkholes that occurred throughout California due to the abundance of rainfall.
Beyond Marysville is small town Oroville, which is located at the foot of the highest dam in the United States. It really looked like a ghost town from a Wild West movie: the shops were locked, all the businesses were closed, the belated Residents take things and even furniture out of their houses. The last townspeople in great panic left the deserted settlement.
The accident with the simultaneous destruction of all the spillways of the dam in California's Oroville served as a prime example of a big problem arising from a small but systematic oversight. The destructive processes, not detected in time by the responsible services, eventually led to a serious threat and the need for the prompt evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, the use of colossal forces to eliminate the accident and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars for the operation. Until the situation turned into a catastrophic stage - the water did not break the dam, however, it revealed the problems of the existing system of maintenance of hydraulic structures, and destroyed the guarantees that a real tragedy would not occur in any of the regions of the world.
What is a California dam
The Oroville Dam is the highest in the United States. The height of its soil part reaches 235 meters. The dam is located on the Feather River (a tributary of the Sacramento River). A stone dam with a clay core forms the Oroville reservoir with a surface area of 10.2 thousand square kilometers and a water volume of 4.3 cubic kilometers.
The reservoir itself is part of the complex, which includes a hydroelectric power station with a capacity of 819 MW with six generators, power point Hyatt, Thermalito pump-generator station, as well as a fish factory. The main tasks of the complex are the water supply of the region, flood control and power generation. The facility was built in 1961–1968.
The facilities of the complex are located on the right side along the river. The closest facility to the dam is the operational spillway (reinforced concrete flume) for normal water operation. More to the right is emergency reset in case of catastrophic floods. Until the February incident, it was not used, since there were no such floods. According to statistics, large-scale floods in this region can occur no more than once every ten thousand years.
The reset looks like a hundred-meter wall with a height of 10–20 meters. The incoming water should overflow without regulation, while its layer will be tens of centimeters. Further, at the junction with the right bank of the valley, there is a blind section of the dam with a height of up to 30 meters.
Chronology of the incident
Since the beginning of 2017, the water level in the Oroville Reservoir has been rising at an intermittent rate. However, the record belongs to the summer of 1983, but then no emergencies was not observed. In January 2017, the amount of precipitation in the region exceeded the norm by three times. Since the beginning of February, the weather has been extremely warm, even at night it did not fall below 10 degrees Celsius.
Already on February 7, a large washout was revealed in the middle part of the spillway. The karst failure, as experts from the CIS believe, happened due to leaching of the rocky base. While the repairmen examined the damage, the water in the reservoir rapidly accumulated. When it reached a critical level, which already threatened the safety of the dam itself, the emergency teams left the failure zone and the water was directed through the discharge.
The consequences were not long in coming. The concrete fastening on the bottom of the structure was destroyed, after which the water began to wash out the rock under the drain. The destructive process began at the time of water consumption at the level of 1.4 thousand cubic meters per second. For comparison, in 1997, the dam passed a flow of 4 thousand cubic meters per second without any problems. The gap reached a size of 150 by 90 meters and a depth of 14 meters.
The engineers who identified the problem expected the structure to collapse at any moment, and therefore reduced the flow of water by 15%, using an emergency release that had not been used before, and by February 10 it turned out that the subgrade of the backup drain was also damaged, and the reason for the violation of integrity object could not be identified.
The flow of water carried fragments of rock into the riverbed, so the work of the hydroelectric power station had to be stopped, otherwise it could be flooded due to backwater. Meanwhile, the rupture pit on the main fault was expanding, destroying its walls and eroding the adjacent slope. The situation at the emergency drain has become critical. The decision was made to resume the increased flow through the main spillway, despite the threat of loss of control over the dam due to the possible destruction of the flow.
Elimination of the accident and preventive measures
Since the threat of destruction of the infrastructure of the dam, California Governor Jerry Brown has asked President Donald Trump to send federal forces and funds to deal with the emergency. In his appeal, the official noted that assistance should also be provided to the districts that house residents evacuated from areas of possible flooding.
On Monday, February 13, the Governor of California declared a state of emergency in the region, in the territory of three districts - Yuba, Sutter and Butte. State National Guard units were put on alert. The White House reported that the president had instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the response to the emergency. In addition, the Ministry of Defense of the country also joined the work. Pronedra wrote earlier that Trump also declared a state of emergency in the disaster area.
The Russian side immediately offered its help. The Center for the Development of the Water Management Complex of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation stated that domestic specialists can work on solving the problem of the emergency state of the dam, including by providing appropriate scientific advice. Such tasks are not new to Russians; Moscow has already provided assistance in similar emergencies to countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Large forces were put on alert in the United States - a total of about 20 thousand military personnel. 125 teams of builders and four dozen heavy vehicles were sent directly to the work area. Aviation was involved, including helicopters of the National Guard, with the help of which they began to drop bags of sand and rock onto the sites of the erosion of the drain. Sandbag barriers are also being built around the dam. Every hour, about 1.2 thousand tons of rock fragments are placed in the gullies.
The state authorities informed that the work carried out by February 15 made it possible to stop the development of a catastrophic situation, and the expected storm with precipitation was not as significant as expected. In general, the cost of priority measures was estimated at $200 million. It is not yet known how the condition of spillways will affect the further operation of the dam. Work continues. Thanks to the measures taken, the dam is already able to receive additional water inflow. At present, the discharge volume is 2.8 thousand cubic meters per second, while the rains do not stop and will continue for several more days.
According to RusHydro, measures are being taken to reduce the level of the reservoir by 2.5 meters per day in order to safely receive the upcoming precipitation. In the riverbed, rubble is being cleared to prevent possible flooding of the HPP facilities. The launch of the station's capacities will make it possible to unload some part of the operational discharge. If the latter is recoverable, it will be repaired. In case of impossibility of repair work, a new spillway will be built. It is possible that it is necessary to reinforce the slope of the emergency discharge with concrete and, in general, assess the possibility of its use in the future.
Evacuation, panic and looting
After the appearance of information from the Department of Water Resources of California about the threat of an imminent breakthrough of the dam (later it turned out that the forecasts were unreasonably exaggerated), the state authorities decided to evacuate the local population. By February 13, a total of 188,000 people were evacuated or left on their own from the cities of Yuba City, Gridley, Olivehurst, Plumas Lake, Whitland, Marysville and Live Oak. But the routes of the evacuees were observed colossal traffic jams. Temporarily resettled citizens were placed in different areas at a distance of 32-120 kilometers from the zone of possible flooding.
A significant role in causing panic was played by conflicting statements by officials, in particular, the emergence of information about the possible destruction of the dam in a matter of hours. Already on February 15, the evacuated residents were told that they could return to their homes, although it was noted that the threat of flooding still remained and that citizens might have to leave dangerous area again. Citizens who returned to their homes faced the consequences of looting in their cities. Such reports came from Oroville, where, in the absence of residents, there were massive thefts in abandoned stores.
Forecast of the development of the situation in the near future
The state authorities initially took a pessimistic stance in terms of predicting developments. The California Department of Water Resources admitted that if the structure of the dam is damaged, the prognosis may be unfavorable. According to local police, who interviewed experts in the field of hydraulic engineering, a hole in the weir could threaten the integrity of the entire dam. However, experts emphasize that dams using concrete components are usually less susceptible to erosion processes.
However, if the structure is damaged, it can also cause its collapse. The Russian Institute of Hydrotechnical and Energy Construction believes that the dam can survive if excess water is discharged through open gates. A catastrophe is potentially possible if the spillway does not function.
The most dire predictions came on February 11, when state officials announced that the water level in the river would rise to a critical level due to a possible dam failure. Although the next day it was announced that the threat had passed, on February 13, there were again reports of the threat of the dam being destroyed. The negative scenario provides for the speed of wave propagation in the flat terrain within 25 kilometers per hour, in the mountains - up to 100 kilometers per hour. It is claimed that the height of the breakthrough wave for small reservoirs with a water volume of up to 50 million cubic meters will be up to one meter, but in the case of Oroville, whose capacity is eight and a half times greater, the wave will reach a height of up to nine meters.
Recall that in this case, six settlements with a total population of up to 200 thousand people will be in the flood zone. In turn, RusHydro noted that as of February 12, when signs of active erosion of rocks were noticed on the slope below the emergency discharge, a certain threat arose for the inhabitants of the region. If the overflow wall collapsed due to intense jetting, this could cause an uncontrolled discharge of a layer of about 12 meters of the reservoir in height.
There are also alternative points of view. Forecasting for the next few days is a difficult task, say hydraulic engineers from the CIS, interviewed by journalists. It is more likely that the dam will remain intact, while the spillways - both the main and emergency ones - will be washed out to the stage of complete destruction, but there will be no noticeable damage to the population and infrastructure. The overflow through the dam will stop after some time, or the process of spillway erosion will take place for a long period - within one month, which will not cause drastic changes in the situation and the problem will not become more complicated.
RusHydro believes that the current data give grounds to assert that there is no threat of destruction of the dam, but the spillway facilities are in disrepair. The crest of the dam is six meters above the emergency discharge mark, so an abnormal overflow of water is also excluded. If the erosion of the outflow moves to the spillways themselves, then the latter will probably be destroyed. Directly, the pit at the spillway stopped active expansion, having reached the rocky base after fragile rocks were washed out.
Meanwhile, after the accident at one dam, other “hot spots” in California were simply forgotten. The overflow of the reservoir due to heavy rainfall is a problem not only for the Oroville Dam, but also for most of the hydraulic structures in the California Valley. Fears are caused by the situation on the Sacramento River near the city of the same name. A dam on a river shows signs of deformation after prolonged exposure to water currents. Some water has already seeped through the dam and into the city park, which is located by the river. In addition, a threatening situation is observed in the area of the dam on the San Joaquin River.
In addition, the water level at the dam of the Don Pedro reservoir has almost reached the upper edge of the structure. If a snow storm breaks out in the Sierra Nevada mountains in eastern California, flooding is likely to be inevitable. To prevent these structures from collapsing, the State decided to deliberately destroy the dam on the Moklamn River, which resulted in the flooding of nearby agricultural land, but reduced the risk of large-scale accidents.
Possible versions of the causes of the accident
Possible problems with the dam became known long before the February 2006 accident. Even then, experts discovered minor violations of the integrity of the main spillway, but the facility was recognized as serviceable. Capital repair work on the dam has not been carried out for half a century - from the day it was put into operation. last decade The dam operated under a temporary license. Probably, the reason for the uncertain status of the dam is associated with an attempt to issue a permit for a period of 50 years by the California authorities and the subsequent reaction of the public.
In 2005, a group of environmental activists - the South Yuba Citizens League, Sierra Club and Friends of the River - demanded that the authorities reinforce the emergency vent with concrete instead of an earth foundation. In a joint letter from the organizations, it was stated that during the winter rains, water would begin to overflow through the main spillway, which would eventually lead to erosion with further structural failure and flooding. The proposals were received by the presidential administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but they, based on the conclusions of the California Department of Water Resources about the inappropriateness of such work, rejected the initiative. According to the authors of the letter, the authorities simply decided to save money, since strengthening the emergency spillway with concrete would cost millions of dollars. Now, the department claims that the cause of erosion on the drains is unknown.
Like any serious threat, the situation with the risk of a dam failure is already overgrown with rumors and exotic theories. In particular, it is assumed that a possible catastrophe was deliberately provoked in order to smooth out the discontent of the California population, the majority of which voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. A big disaster can unite a nation and eliminate political divisions. In addition, it should be borne in mind that California public activists are actively calling for the separation of the region from the United States.
Supporters of the conspiracy theory believe that the failure of the main spillway was manageable and was the result of sabotage - the leak arose by interfering with the work of an already worn-out infrastructure. In addition, there were statements that the rescue services conducted exercises a few years ago, during which they practiced actions in the event of a dam failure. At the same time, the almost exact date of a possible event has already been specified in the scenario of maneuvers.
If we talk about real facts, then RusHydro, having analyzed the development of the emergency situation and possible prerequisites, came to a number of conclusions. It is noted that the destruction of the operational spillway occurred suddenly, and the levels of water flow were not at all maximum. Thus, we should talk about the insufficient degree of control over the state of the hydraulic structure, which did not allow timely detection of damage, the company noted.
It is difficult to call correct the design decision itself, associated with the discharge of water masses onto an ordinary unequipped slope. Spillways must pass mandatory tests. Nevertheless, it must be stated that the safety margin of the dam turned out to be sufficient, despite the fact that accidents occurred on both spillways. Thus, large hydraulic structures in general can be considered reliable structures, the company noted.
Regardless of what the conclusions of the investigation of the accident turn out to be, it is obvious even to non-specialists that, apart from dubious theories of sabotage or sabotage, the unsatisfactory condition of both spillways, most likely, was the result of the usual negligence of services that did not track the process of structural damage due to natural wear processes. The lack of preventive measures almost caused a large-scale tragedy, and only the reliability of the dam itself, which acted as insurance against the negligence of industry services, can be thanked for the happy outcome of the situation.
And so, judging by the video, it’s just that the spillway can’t cope and began to collapse from such a flow of water
Therefore, the engineers reduced the discharge of water, well, the water reached the emergency spillway. And that was used for the first time since the construction of the dam. But here is another jamb of engineers, the reverse side of the emergency spillway began to erode, which created a threat of its destruction with an understandable result.
And the media has already picked up the tantrum. The main dam is safe, I understand.
Original taken from antizoomby in Photographs of a California drought.
Lake Oroville, California.
California is suffering from a severe drought:
In May, 100% of California experienced a "severe" drought (it was ranked 3rd out of 5 possible). But, following the release of new numbers, that percentage has been reduced to 99.8%, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Meanwhile, about 82% of California continues to experience "extreme" drought, and more than half of the state is experiencing "exceptional" drought, according to established categories.
Californians have been suffering from the effects of drought for quite some time now. Local officials impose restrictions on water consumption and implore residents to conserve water by all possible ways. Heck, even hosting the Ice Bucket Challenge flash mob runs into serious problems due to the unwillingness to waste water.
Below are some shocking photos that show the serious consequences of the California drought.
Ships on Lake Oroville.
Lake Shasta.
Lake Shasta.
Dam on Folsom Lake.
Lake Folsom.
Lake Oroville.
A few more explanatory photos (as well as visual comparisons with the recent past) from (it is recommended to go to the link - there are more photos and they are better).
Lake Shasta, California, USA, August 30, 2014. About 30% of water remains. (Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
Dry part of Lake Shasta, California, USA, August 30, 2014. Ahead is a buoy. (Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
Lake Oroville, June 20, 2011. (Photo by Paul Hames)
And this is what the same place looked like on August 19, 2014. (Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
And again Lake Oroville, June 20, 2011. (Photo by Paul Hames)
Another place of Lake Oroville, June 20, 2011. (Photo by Paul Hames)
Same location on August 19, 2014. (Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
Lake Oroville and bridge, June 20, 2011. (Photo by Paul Hames)
And this is the aftermath of a drought in California: the same place on August 19, 2014. (Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
A dam spillway at Lake Oroville in California on August 19, 2014. Stands dry, idle. (Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
Lake Oroville and ships, California, August 19, 2014. It currently has 32% water left. Photo by Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
