WrightwoodCalif.com Forum
Public Forums => In The news => Topic started by: Wrightwood on Feb 12, 17, 07:20:11 PM
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I have been following this for a few days and here are a few links to local news outlets that have good coverage if you're interested...
http://www.kcra.com/
http://fox40.com/
http://www.krcrtv.com/
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LIVE VIEW: State Emergency Operations Center
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJVG0z1g6Eo
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The situation has been deteriorating rapidly since the concrete spillway was damaged. Is this a man made disaster like the failure of the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon in 1926 or is it a act of nature? Perhaps both are contributing factors.
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Live news conference at 9pm about to start... all CA DWR news conferences broadcast on their twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/CA_DWR
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Live news conference at 9pm about to start... all CA DWR news conferences broadcast on their twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/CA_DWR
Press conference pushed back until 10pm 2/12/2017.
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If you have the band width: YouTube live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3j82YEsTo&t=4741s
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Not that I'm a hydrologist or an engineer, but if you use Google Earth's timeline feature to look at older pictures of the spillway the amount of cracks in it are pretty shocking. The entire spillway looks like that. If you have google earth, go back to the date shown in the upper left-hand corner if you want to explore it for yourself. Full disclosure, I think there is a thin sheet of water pouring down the spillway when the satellite took this picture, so that may be exaggerating the cracks. Even if that is true, it's still a LOT of cracking if my mostly ignorant opinion.
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2525/32720042002_9f763478a4_o.jpg)
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Pretty sure those are ripples in the water, Joe Schmoe, not cracks.
Was just watching some updates. Looks like it's going to be fine until Wednesday when more rain comes at least.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4hci0aUcAES60v.jpg:large)
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Pretty sure those are ripples in the water, Joe Schmoe, not cracks.
I also thought that might be the case, but I'm pretty sure they aren't. Here is a very-enhanced photo during time when no water was being let out. There are cracks that are similar in shape to the ones in my first photo. There are also cracks in the first photo that are vertical versus horizontal. I'm pretty sure water doesn't cascade that way.
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/600/32031703484_92f13428b9_o.jpg)
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Reporting from the Sacramento area! :)
The Auxiliary/Emergency spillway at Oroville Dam has not failed as of this writing. The water level in Lake Oroville continues to drop via the main (damaged) spillway, in anticipation of the storms starting Wednesday evening.
Local news sources have been all over this issue, all morning long. They are reporting 180,000+ people evacuating. Hotels as far south as Sacramento are fully occupied (Blue Cut fire anyone?).
Another news source is the local NPR radio station, Capital Public Radio.
http://www.capradio.org/
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Thanks for the links, RennMan. This is an amazing situation.
I'm watching a live stream of coverage from a Sacramento TV station at:
http://www.kcra.com/nowcast
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Betting that there will be those who don't feel the evacuation is the real deal and will stay behind. One of the reasons they are pre-positioning so many swift water rescue teams on site. Hoping they are not needed but a prudent call from CAL OES
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CalOES (California Department of Emergency Services) YouTube channel.
At least a few of these videos were shot this past week via drone. You can get a good idea of the current conditions in the Sacramento area.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0EkYTPgDeqXa1V-RSa-7FA
Actually, the power of water is pretty impressive.
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From the weather channel this morning for Oroville ...
THUR FEB 16 - Rain 100%
FRI FEB 17 - Rain 100%
SAT FEB 18 - Showers 50%
SUN FEB 19 - Showers 50%
MON FEB 20 - Rain 70%
TUE FEB 21 - Showers 60%
WED FEB 22 - Showers 60%
Time to send the Amer Red Cross another donation &
Were praying for you guys ...
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I am a little surprised that an emergency spillway so very close to houses and people was only a dirt embankment, not even lightly paved, or coated with riprap or something. I realize that with the dry summers, the officials probably never really expected the rain levels we're seeing this winter, but someone may have dropped the ball as far as expected levels that they might need to deal with. Has there been any mention of whether this is maybe a '100-year event' or something like it?
Praying that the residents can and do evacuate, hopefully with their animals.
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Pending press conference live feed:
http://fox40.com/on-air/live-streaming/
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(Note: I'm not sure how much of the sediment is due to the Oroville incident but thought this was interesting)
Twitter:
Ryan Hollister 5 hours ago
Check out the sediment plume coming out of SF Bay and into the Pacific yesterday.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4utJ8pUkAALuct.jpg)
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CA - DWR ?@CA_DWR 8m8 minutes ago
More
Recent photos of progress made at #OrovilleSpillway. Despite wet weather, ongoing delivery of rock and concrete continues today.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C44lJTsUcAEfljv.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C44lTnVVMAUof8k.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C44lUbsVUAUix_q.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C44lWnaUoAA16J2.jpg)
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Twitter
Daniel Swain ?@Weather_West 6 minutes ago
Latest high-res model forecasts keying in on 10+ inch rainfall bullseye in Feather River watershed over 48hr period.#Oroville #CAwx #CAflood pic.twitter.com/ZuMwpUHIgv
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4-lg22VcAE0Rtn.jpg:large)
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C48-6UvUoAENI2o.jpg:large)
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I finally found something that describes how many gallons per second is equal to the release of 100,000 CFS.
OROVILLE
There is 7.48 gallons in one cubic foot. Do the math, and the 100,000 cubic feet per second being released from the damaged spillway at Lake Oroville, equals 748,000 gallons every second.
Lake Oroville has a max capacity of 1.15 trillion gallons. At current releases, Lake Oroville is losing 44.8 million gallons of water per minute or 2.69 billion gallons per hour. There is also some water flowing into the lake. This is why we don't see much of a decrease per hour in the level of the lake
Fast Facts: How much water is coming out of our biggest reservoirs
http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/shasta/what-does-cubic-foot-per-second-cfs-really-mean/333553543
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Published on May 17, 2014
Oroville Dam is an earthfill embankment dam on the Feather River east of the city of Oroville, California in the United States. At 770 feet (230 m) high, it is the tallest dam in the U.S. and serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation and flood control. The dam impounds Lake Oroville, the second largest man-made lake in the state of California, capable of storing more than 3.5 million acre-feet (4.4 km3), and is located in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley.
http://www.youtube.com/v/CF4ToIhKEeI&showsearch=0&rel=0&fs=1&autoplay=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF4ToIhKEeI
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More fun and surprising facts.
The 100,000 CFS coming down that spillway is more than the average discharge flow of the Missouri River (76,000 CFS) and about 1/6 of the average discharge flow of the Mississippi River (593,000 CFS)!
And unlike the Missouri and Mississippi rivers the spillway water is dropping some 700 feet in a few thousand feet.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1987/ofr87-242/
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Mind boggling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBaZQZCmZ-Y
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Mark Finan? @kcraFinan 56m56 minutes ago
Our first view of the damaged Lake Oroville spillway without the water flowing pic.twitter.com/boCZ5NwYB8
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5s06uoU4AAITtB.jpg)
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Mark Finan is the Chief Meteorologist at KCRA3/NBC here in Sacramento. I'm certain there will be an interesting report on tonights' news...
http://www.kcra.com/article/dwr-begins-decreasing-oroville-releases-to-zero/8985871
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Here's the latest from KCRA/Sacramento:
http://www.kcra.com/article/exclusive-look-at-the-damaged-lake-oroville-spillway/8992515
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Then, there was this interesting article in this mornings' Atlas Obscura e-mail:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oroville-california-dam-spillway-model-repair/
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Work to repair/rebuild the Oroville spillway has been going on since May. The pictures below shows the progress made as the contractor reaches the end of the first phase of repairs.
I can't remember the cost but I bet it is astronomical!
From Twitter:
CA - DWR? @CA_DWR 46m46 minutes ago
Please see corrected graphic. And stay tuned for more updates throughout the day. #OrovilleSpillway
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNj7_N8U8AA0uY3.jpg)
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Updated Cost for Oroville Dam Spillway Disaster: $1.1 Billion
The California Department of Water Resources says the cost of the Oroville Dam spillway disaster -- the combined price tag for the emergency response, debris removal and rehabilitating the shattered main spillway structure and adjoining emergency overflow channel -- has hit $1.1 billion.
Wednesday's announcement, made during a telephone media briefing, is the second time this year that the reported cost of the spillway incident has jumped by 25 percent or more. In January, DWR estimated the project cost at $870 million.
The department's original estimate for the cost of the February 2017 spillway failure and its aftermath -- a guess made before the rapid erosion of the emergency spillway prompted the evacuation of about 188,000 people from communities along the Feather River below the dam -- was between $100 million and $200 million.
The agency said the estimated cost of construction has risen from $500 million to $630 million. The estimate for related cleanup work, including agency staff time and future cleanup and restoration of the massive job site, has risen from $210 million to $310 million. The rest of the price tag -- $160 million -- is for the initial emergency response and remains unchanged from earlier this year.
DWR spokeswoman Erin Mellon said during Wednesday's briefing that the $130 million in increased construction costs is due to the need for additional crews to help rebuild the main spillway by Nov. 1 and for work to limit erosion in the adjoining emergency spillway if it overflows again.
To protect the emergency spillway -- a tree- and brush-covered hillside below a quarter-mile-long concrete weir -- engineers have devised a massive concrete splash pad and "cutoff wall." Water would pour down the splash pad and down a long series of steps -- designed to dissipate the energy of flowing water -- before reaching the unpaved portion of the hillside.
The cutoff wall, consisting of piles embedded up to 65 feet into the slope, is intended to stop erosion from working its way up the slope and endangering the overflow weir.
It was that kind of "head-cutting" erosion -- which the DWR and some outside experts had earlier dismissed as a serious possibility -- that dam managers feared could lead to an uncontrolled release of water and prompted the Feb. 12, 2017, evacuation orders.
Mellon said Wednesday that crews working for general contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West have needed to do more extensive excavation in the emergency spillway than first anticipated to reach rock sound enough to use as a foundation for the splashpad. The extra work to get down to competent rock, along with the need for additional material to build the splashpad, was a major factor in the increased costs, Mellon said.
The department says it continues to submit project expenditures to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which may reimburse up to 75 percent of the costs. DWR reported in January that FEMA had reimbursed the state for $87.4 million -- exactly 75 percent -- of the first $116.5 million in spending the agency submitted.
No further FEMA payments have been forthcoming. Asked by a reporter Wednesday whether it was fair to say full federal reimbursement would be a "long and involved" process, Mellon replied, "Yes."
Oroville Dam and Lake Oroville are the principal facilities of the State Water Project. DWR has said that the State Water Contractors, the 28 urban and farm water agencies that get their supplies from the project, are expected to pay for costs not covered by FEMA.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11690563/new-cost-for-oroville-dam-spillway-disaster-1-1-billion
https://www.courthousenews.com/price-tag-to-repair-tallest-us-dam-spikes-to-1-1-billion/