200,000 told to leave
Threat appears to ease as water levels drop, but more rain expected Wednesday
OROVILLE, Calif. — Water levels dropped Monday at California’s Lake Oroville, stopping water from spilling over a massive dam’s potentially hazardous emergency spillway after authorities ordered the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people from towns lying below the lake.
California Department of Water Resources officials were preparing to inspect erosion on the spillway at the Oroville Dam, the nation’s largest.
Authorities ordered the evacuations Sunday for people living below the lake after authorities warned that failure of the emergency spillway could send a ninemetre wall of water into the communities.
“We grabbed our dog and headed to higher ground — away from the river,” said Kimberly Cumings, who moved with her husband Patrick and three-year-old daughter to Oroville from Fresno a month ago for a new job. They were eating at a restaurant when the evacuation order came.
A driver with a large vehicle and three children of her own gave them a ride to a Red Cross evacuation centre.
“You can’t take a chance with the baby,” Patrick Cumings said of their decision to flee.
Lake Oroville also serves as a reservoir and levels rose significantly in recent weeks after a series of storms that have dumped rain and snow across California, particularly in northern parts of the state, where the lake lies about 240 km northeast of San Francisco.
The high water levels forced the use of the dam’s spillway, or overflow, for the first time in the dam’s nearly 50-year history on Saturday.
The threat appeared to ease somewhat Monday, with officials saying water flows into the lake stood at about 1,275 cubic metres per second with outflows at 2,830 cubic metres per second.
Sunday afternoon’s evacuation order came after engineers spotted a hole on the concrete lip of the secondary spillway for the 235-metre-tall Oroville Dam and told authorities that it could fail within the hour.
With more rain expected Wednesday and Thursday, officials are rushing to try to fix the damage and hoping to significantly reduce the dam’s water level ahead of the storms.
The sudden evacuation panicked residents, who scrambled to get their belongings into cars and then grew angry as they sat in bumperto-bumper traffic hours after the evacuation order was given.
Raj Gill, managing a Shell station where anxious motorists got gas and snacks, said his boss told him to close the station and flee himself. But he stayed open to feed a steady line of customers.
“You can’t even move,” he said. “I’m trying to get out of here too. I’m worried about the flooding. I’ve seen the pictures — that’s a lot of water.”
At least 250 California law enforcement officers were posted near the dam and along evacuation routes to manage the exodus of residents and ensure evacuated towns don’t face looting or other criminal activity.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said a lot was still unknown.
“We need to continue to lower the lake levels and we need to give the Department of Water Resources time to fully evaluate the situation so we can make the decision to whether or not it is safe to repopulate the area,” Honea said.