Homes beneath California’s crumbling dam lie abandoned as it’s revealed officials were warned about it TWELVE YEARS ago and residents face WEEKS of homelessness amid fight to stop collapse
Some 200,000 people were forced to flee their homes surrounding California’s Oroville Dam on Sunday
They may be displaced for weeks as emergency services race against a forecast storm to stop it from flooding
Another one to three inches of rain is due to fall on Wednesday into the already saturated rivers
They are trying to remove water from Lake Oroville before a storm hits on Wednesday bringing in more rain
The problem began when two of the dam’s spillways – its main spillway and an emergency one – failed
The main spillway has a gaping hole from years of erosion, putting all of the strain on the emergency spillway
It buckled under the pressure of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water which gushed down into towns
Environmental groups predicted the exact chain of events in 2003 but had their fears ignored by officials
By James Wilkinson and Liam Quinn and Gareth Davies
DailyMail.com
14 February 2017
Homes beneath California’s crumbling Oroville Dam lay abandoned on Tuesday as their owners took shelter in evacuation centers where they may remain for weeks.
They were forced to flee on Sunday when two spillways on the 49-year-old dam failed. Erosion caused a huge hole in the first, the main spillway, putting all of the strain on a never before used emergency spillway. Backed only by weak rocks and soil, it buckled as water overwhelmed it at a rate of 94,254 gallons per second.
The combined result is that water is making its way down into the Feather River at a frightening speed and entire communities are at risk of becoming totally submerged if more water, brought by rainfall, causes Lake Oroville to rise again.
Emergency services are now frantically trying to drain it as a pair of storms forecast for Wednesday and Friday threaten to set back their make-shift repairs.
Some 200,000 residents of Butte, Sutter and Yuba have been displaced in the meantime, taking refuge in make-shift shelters where they could remain for weeks before it is safe for them to return.
They fled on Sunday evening when authorities were finally forced to issue an emergency evacuation order after days of claiming the situation was safe.
Residents have since told of their hurried escape, describing the scene of entire communities fleeing in their packed up cars as ‘pure chaos’. Now, they have no choice but to wait helplessly as emergency workers try to drain the lake before a set of storms hit the area bringing more rain later this week.
On Monday it was revealed officials were warned about the main spillway’s fragility 12 years ago but ignored concerns.
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