[EarthResearcher333]

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:

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“Whatever you may hear, this is a significant event which could be horrible in its scope and its magnitude. Let us pray that it does not breach, and let us hope that, at last people are sufficiently concerned to act.

Scott Cahill”

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**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?

[meyer]

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.

[mrsmith]

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.

[KC Burke]

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?

[The Westerner]

Fantastic summary and comparison to building skyscrapers in Windy City. I'm going to take a wild guess the original engineering was done toward the end of Pat Brown's governorshp in the 60’s, when the culture shifted like an earthquake destabilizing the standards of rigor and adherence to reality, where the political pressure shifted to “just get it done!” I lived through the mass nervous breakdown of societal norms led by the new left (which spawned Moonbeam the out of focus pothead). Interestng coincidence that Atlas Shrugged was published back then. It describes exactly this kind of thinking, “it's never going to happen but don't blame me if it does" you and Scott Cahill are uncovering.

[Jim W N]

How would this hold up in an accountability standpoint?

I'm sure there are good technical engineering answers to such a relevant question.

But we're talking about the government here, and when all else fails, government does the "Avoid Accountability Shuffle" (the infamous AAS) better any entity on earth.

[Jim W N]

That’s why they hate and are scared of Trump. He doesn’t accept zero accountability and will blast the perps.