Mass evacuation as rains strain tallest US dam

TIL Desk/World/Oroville-Almost 200,000 people were under evacuation orders in northern California today after a threat of catastrophic failure at the United States’ tallest dam. Officials said the threat had subsided for the moment as water levels at the Oroville Dam, 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of San Francisco, have eased. But people were still being told to stay out of the area.

Several weeks of heavy rains had filled the 770-foot (235-meter) high dam to capacity. The threat comes not from the dam itself, which the California Department of Water Resources said was not in danger of collapse, but from an emergency spillway that channels off excess water.

A giant hole opened up in the dam’s main spillway last week, forcing authorities to activate the emergency spillway on Saturday for the first time ever. But it began eroding, threatening a rupture that would have sent water surging towards cities in the valley below, US media reported.

Authorities then released 100,000 cubic feet (2,830 cubic meters) of water per second from the main spillway, bringing down the level of reservoir Sunday, A newspaper said, citing Department of Water Resources spokesman Doug Carlson. Although the most pressing threat had passed, the evacuation order remained in place as authorities evaluated the state of the two spillways.