Evacuations In California

[CathyA]

I don't know that much about it, but I do think it was a secondary safety wall for a lake. Maybe I'm making a wrong assumption, but it's the overflow of the lake. I don't think the entire lake will spill out...just the overflow. I'm not sure it's like a regular dam.

[creaker]

I don't know that much about it, but I do think it was a secondary safety wall for a lake. Maybe I'm making a wrong assumption, but it's the overflow of the lake. I don't think the entire lake will spill out...just the overflow. I'm not sure it's like a regular dam.

There's the Oroville dam - some water can flow out via the power generation stuff - in addition there's a spillway to release water when the level is too high. The 1st issue is a sinkhole developed in the primary spillway - but they can't shut it off because the water level is too high. So it's destroying the spillway and land downstream from the sinkhole.

Lake kept filling to capacity so it started flowing down the emergency spillway as well that has never been used - and the land downhill from the spillway wasn't properly maintained so the water was really tearing it up and started compromising the emergency spillway, which triggered the evacuations.

Currently the water has dropped enough it's not topping the emergency spillway - but there's a lot of rain coming later this week. If the emergency spillway gives way they are talking like a 30 foot wall of water coming down.