I agree with you, but if they order a Nother evacuation, many people will feel that they were burned and may not comply. Their homes were looted. And the officials stated that the collapse of the dam was going to occur within 60 minutes. I’m not sure how they get their credibility back.
Here is part of the evidence supporting a ‘run for your life’ evacuation order. Photographs in the ‘gallery’ show the top of the emergency spillway and illustrates the erosion with 1.5 foot depth of flow across the weir. The assumed solid bedrock of the spillway has revealed poor strength—the weir as cast in place with no anchorage to the underlying rock is as deep as 40 feet. No core testing was performed upon the rock—appears as an original design flaw based on the assumption of solid rock which has been shown as mistaken.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-oroville-spillway-failure-20170216-story.html
If they tell me to evacuate again, I will.
In the evacuation notice, they were crystal clear to say there was a small but definitive chance that the 30-foot tall emergency spillway could collapse. NOBODY stated the dam was collapsing in an hour. That is a large exaggeration.
If the lake resumes spillover level and overtops the emergency spillway, the real concern for a possibility of failure will return, and evacuations with it.
The Oroville Sheriff is not lacking in credibility. He explained everything before the fact, and explained it in better detail after the fact.
Anybody who fails to obey a mandatory evacuation order should the emergency spillway become active again with over-topping water, they are just plain foolish and gambling with their life and their families lives.