Three craters. It looks like a chunk is ready to break off, lower left of lowest crater.
Posted on 02/12/2017 4:26:47 PM PST by janetjanet998
Edited on 02/12/2017 9:33:58 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The Oroville Dam is the highest in the nation.
Government is private enterprise after you take away reason and accountability.
Makes sense. That’s the stuff you learn in law school. How to weasel out of stuff.
See, government is never concerned about things like “safety” to humans, only “satisfactory” to whatever the government says is satisfactory. IOW, “satisfactory” is the same as “good enough for government work.”
The key ingredients to a government project is ensuring political advantage and the size of the bureaucracy involved increases so the bureaucratic heads get a bigger paycheck.
Generally, all government sees is government.
“Spillway Design Flood Pool = 917 feet”
“Emergency Spillway Crest Elevation = 901 feet”
I can’t even imagine 16 feet of water coming over...
It was near failure with something like 1 foot coming over...
All this religious mantra of Global Warming / climate Change / Forever Drought made it where the repairs that were reoccurring became to be viewed as almost unneeded as there was absolute scientific agreement that there would never be a full lake again - that is the mental climate that allowed this.
The closing in the morning for a damage assessment still had to contain drivel about fisheries flow etc etc.
They are poisoned by their culture.
Three craters. It looks like a chunk is ready to break off, lower left of lowest crater.
Short of some major catastrophe upstream, I cannot imagine a wall of water that tall finding its way to the emergency spillway.
It doesn’t look so bad with only 50,000 flowing. :)
Thanks, I have not been able to figure out how to capture the images from that URL.
Here is one way to look at it. Look at the big picture: Look at it from “There are no excuses” standpoint - this is engineering. If you don’t know pre-performance data (ES erosion & fractured rock emplacement upon - “rotten rock”), you find out - beforehand**. If there were warning signs on the main spillway - you fix it (there were warning signs from multiple fixes & multiple inspections at the exact blowout area).
Compare this to the tremendous engineering of Trump International Hotel & Tower skyscraper in Chicago. It must meet its full & amazing engineering safety standards including all safety margins. They tested all of it thoroughly - including wind channeled tornadoes.
The Brooklyn bridge was designed to be six times the safety margin.
Now imagine the costs (original & now to “fix it”): Imagine a no-holds barred leader, such as Trump, coming into a meeting and asking... driving.. into the answers on why such a colossal failure. Imagine the answers that should be given to the Public in accountability on how they got there & to assure them that what is going to be done (fixes) will not meet such disastrous results.
I realize that there are a series of events that led to the current situation. However, in Engineering, and especially with Inspection & Maintenance warning signs, it is unconscionable to allow such huge “misses” to occur.
Scott Cahill, a dam expert, has been very good at word crafting the magnitude of this situation. Here is a quote from one of his recent writings:
Scott Cahill”
**For such a colossal performance Dam, you MUST know each and all of the failure conditions. Did you know that the ES was relegated to a larger size “secondary structure” since they couldn’t get the larger capacity ‘delta wing’ main spillway design to work? (they had rooster tails up to 100 feet high in model testing... they had vortices swirling in the main spillway, they had large waves sloshing over the tall spillway walls of the models...).
When you reduce the main spillway to a smaller non-turbulent laminar flow design (took three designs to arrive at this one), and then you make up for the much higher lost flood control numbers by placing a non-tested (hydrological model) ES with no real anchoring, and then rate it for such a monstrous capacity - with no concrete apron down the hillside... Using the reason as “its use will be infrequent” (actual wording in the design/construction archives). How would this hold up in an accountability standpoint?
Frankly, I think that the built the emergency spillway just to say that they had an emergency spillway. It really only exists to save the dam itself.
They really dodged a bullet with this - restarting the main spillway, despite the damage, saved Oroville, the city. In my opinion, of course.
>>Mind Boggling (Engineering Ratings et al): How Did Such A Magnificent Dam Get to This Point?<<
FROM an Engineering Ratings Perspective, the Oroville dam is a Mind Boggling Disaster.
Check out # 1,918 ...
Thanks, EarthResearcher333.
The emergency spillway fulfilled it’s design function.
An emergency device only operates when the fools have successfully out-witted a foolproof device.
As happened here.
A good example is the emergency relief valve on a boiler. It functions only after foolish operation of the boiler, it causes expensive damage but prevents a catastrophe, and has to be replaced after use.
I started out in laundry repair many decades ago. I still remember a girl whose hair had been caught by the ironer. She was safely cut free because I had made sure that the ‘*safety* bar’- NOT an ‘*emergency* bar’- functioned properly; and the ironer was immediately returned to production.
Some idiot DWR people refer to the emergency spillway as the auxiliary spillway. Saying so doesn’t make it so.
“Some of the listed problems are common to concrete
dams and for the concrete structures associated with embankment dams. Problems can occur in
concrete quality, placement and curing. “
http://www.water.ca.gov/damsafety/docs/rjb-paper.pdf
I’m going with ‘concrete quality’...
<head> … </head>
<body class="prevent-action">
<div id="c2" class="">
<div id="c2content" class="c2content">
<div id="mode-galleries" class="stack-top">
<iron-localstorage id="localstorage" name="paneState"></iron-localstorage>
<header class="header"> … </header>
<div class="wrapper">
<div class="galleries collection-tree-nav info-display">
<div class="widget MediaImpl showing has-siblings" data-ordinal="2">
<ps-media-swipeable class="x-scope ps-media-swipeable-0">
<ps-image-impl class="style-scope ps-media-swipeable x-scope ps-image-impl-0" fade="" loaded="">
<iron-image id="psimg" class="style-scope ps-image-impl x-scope iron-image-0" sizing="contain" style="" fade="">
<div id="sizedImgDiv" class="style-scope iron-image" role="img"
aria-label="The California Department of Water Resources continues to discharge 50,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water from the spillway to continually manage lake levels, water flow, and support construction activities. Photo taken at sunset on February 25, 2017. Kelly M. Grow/ California Department of Water Resources"
style="background-size: contain; background-position: center top; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-image:
url("http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000yYFnwfD7v7Q/sec=wdfsdfoeflwefms2040ed20170302U14nUpDFD1P.bpQ/fit=440");"
></div>
<img id="img" class="style-scope iron-image" hidden=""
alt="The California Department of Water Resources continues to discharge 50,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water from the spillway to continually manage lake levels, water flow, and support construction activities. Photo taken at sunset on February 25, 2017. Kelly M. Grow/ California Department of Water Resources"
src="http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000yYFnwfD7v7Q/sec=wdfsdfoeflwefms2040ed20170302U14nUpDFD1P.bpQ/fit=440"></img>
<div id="placeholder" class="style-scope iron-image" hidden="" style="background-size: contain; background-position: center top; background-repeat: no-repeat;"></div>
</iron-image>
Lop off the "fit=440" part to resize the image. I use "fit=1024". YMMV
I’ll have to study that and try to figure it out...
In the meantime, please post this one with the good view of the debris field.
http://pixel-ca-dwr.photoshelter.com/galleries/C0000OxvlgXg3yfg/G00003YCcmDTx48Y/I00005TA3ic4.Dy0/KG-oroville-damage-14113-jpg
Photo taken February 24, 2017.
Aw come on! You can do it!
I have read about a super wet year in the 1850s (?) that caused tremendous flooding in the entire central valley that lasted for months — turned it north and south into a giant inland sea.
If California were to have that sort of year again, do you think (as I do) that the majority of these structures built in the era prior to the last 40 years will stand the test?
Two weeks and nearly 2000 posts later...
Thanks for the thread!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.