Oroville Dam authorities ordered the immediate evacuation of close to 200,000 inhabitants living below levels of the dam and the areas downstream as early as Sunday. Dam officials saw an eroding section on the Northern Spillway endangering settlements along Feather River.
The emergency spill is expected to collapse on the next sooner than anticipated within the hour as of this writing, declared the California Department of Water Resources. After several hours, the Oroville Dam spillway remained hopeful as it is still intact.
Oroville Dam, the tallest water facility in the United States stands at 770ft(230M) was close to collapse. After so many years of extreme drought, heavy rains filled the dam to capacity that it posed a very real threat of releasing a deadly deluge to the underlying communities below it. In over fifty years of the dam's existence, this is the first time that the spillway in the north overflowed.
The 16,000 Oroville town populace headed north to evade a 30 ft wall of water that could head their way once the spillway collapses. A gridlock in the highways depicted a doomsday image of people fleeing from the dangers the Oroville Dam would bring, reported BBC News.
The Oroville emergency dam spillway began splurging water at the rate of 100 cubic ft/sec. after several hours, as the dam stood intact, hope was in the minds of those affected by the threat of imminent danger of drowning in the deluge, when water flowing through the spillway decreased in volume, reports NPR.
In the latest update, at the height of the evacuation, water in Lake Oroville slowly fell below its full capacity lessening the overflow in the emergency spillway. Evacuation orders are still in effect as the Oroville Dam damage is presently determined by dam officials and impending storms are brewing. These storms will bring more torrential rains that will add more water to the Oroville Dam, as reported by the Washington Post.
