White House FINALLY declares California dam catastrophe an emergency… just as residents are allowed to RETURN home
The White House has approved the California Governor’s request for emergency funding
Evacuation order for Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties was lifted dramatically on Tuesday afternoon
Officials say enough repairs have been done to secure an emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam
They also say they can drain enough water from reservoir above the dam before storms hit at weekend
This means they will not even need to use the emergency spillway which threatened floods on Saturday
Despite lifting the evacuation order, they are telling 200,000 displaced people they may reissue it later
Evacuees fled suddenly on Sunday after being told they had an hour before the emergency spillway collapsed
By JENNIFER SMITH
DailyMail.com
15 February 2017
California Governor Jerry Brown’s request for federal emergency funding to help the dire situation at the Oroville Dam was approved by President Trump’s administration on Tuesday evening.
The governor expressed hope yesterday that the new administration would act quickly and favorably towards the state’s increasingly dire need for funding as the tallest dam in the United States threatened to crumble.
Some, however, were not optimistic about Trump’s response to the state he’s previously called ‘out-of-control’ as animosity mounted between the two parties.
Hundreds of thousands of Californian evacuees were told they could go home after engineers patched up the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam on Tuesday – but they can’t get comfortable just yet.
Engineers say they have been able to beef up a crumbling emergency barrier at the top of the dam which threatened to give way over the weekend and sparked the sudden evacuation.
Supported now by boulders and rocks, it will hold if the water level in Lake Oroville rises to capacity again but that too is unlikely, the Department of Water Resources claims, given the quick rate at which the water is currently being drained.
Despite their confidence that the emergency spillway will hold and the lake won’t fill its 901ft capacity, police are still issuing an evacuation warning.
Though less severe than the evacuation order issued in a panic on Sunday, it means residents of Butte, Yuba and Sutter Counties could be told to abandon their homes again if the situation becomes more precarious.
‘This warning allows people to return to return to their homes and resume their businesses but we’re telling them that they have to be vigilant. There is the prospect we could issue another order if the circumstances change,’ Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a press conference on Tuesday.
The Rest…HERE
