Dam scare chases thousands
OROVILLE, Calif. — Nearly 200,000 people remained under evacuation orders today as California authorities try to fix erosion of the emergency spillway at the nation’s tallest dam that could unleash uncontrolled flood waters if it fails.
About 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, Lake Oroville — one of California’s largest man-made lakes — had water levels so high that the emergency spillway was used Saturday for the first time in almost 50 years.
The evacuation was ordered Sunday afternoon after engineers spotted a hole on the concrete lip of the secondary spillway for the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam and told authorities that it could fail within the hour.
“I’m just shocked,” said Greg Levias, who was evacuating with his wife, Kaysi, two boys and a dog.
What they couldn’t fit in their trunk they piled as high as they could in their downstairs Yuba City apartment and joined the line of traffic attempting to leave the city where they had moved just three weeks ago.
Panicked and angry residents sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic hours after the evacuation order was given.
Raj Gill was managing a Shell station where anxious motorists got gas and snacks while waiting for gridlocked traffic to clear. 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.”
A Red Cross spokesman said more than 500 people were at an evacuation center in Chino, Calif.
The shelter had run out of blankets and cots, and a semi-tractor trailer with 1,000 more cots was stuck in traffic, said Red Cross shelter manager Pam Deditch.
A California Highway Patrol spokesman said they would have two planes out today to help with traffic control as well as search and rescue.
State Fire and Rescue Chief Kim Zagaris said at least 250 law enforcement officers are in the area or on their way to help with the evacuation.
Late Sunday, officials said the evacuation orders remained in place despite the fact water was no longer spilling over the eroded area.
“There is still a lot of unknowns,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a news conference. “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.”
