Posted on 02/13/2017 8:59:54 PM PST by Mariner
It all happened so quickly. Water poured down the rapidly eroding hillside of Oroville Dam on Sunday evening. Engineers with the state had to make a series of quick decisions to avert a catastrophic flood.
When they weren’t sure it would work, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department made the gutsy call to evacuate tens of thousands of residents in a matter of hours. By Monday, state and local officials were working alongside the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the next steps in a still dangerous situation.
This is what should happen when people’s lives are in danger, this beautiful example of cooperation at all levels of government to resolve a crisis. Politics be damned.
But, I fear, that’s not how Donald Trump works. It doesn’t matter that most of the evacuees voted for him.
The president, incredibly, said nothing Sunday as people frantically fled three counties – Yuba, Sutter and Butte – in the nation’s most populous state. Instead, he tweeted about “fake news,” “enthusiastic supporters in Florida,” and how his “crackdown on illegal criminals” was merely about keeping his promise to rid the country of “gang members” and “drug dealers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Tell MoonBeam to give up the Sanctuary Cities to Trump (and REAL America) for help on real water control.
Well, there’s the corrupt Washington politicians and the media, who want to continue in the swamp.. living for them selves and no concern for the people who sent them there.
THEN there’s Donald Trump who is keeping his word, and serving the people..
And they think HE’S the one who doesn’t know anything?
Oroville Dam at risk of collapsing?! Oh no, it is President Trump’s fault. How? Because. /s
I do not believe this happened ‘quickly’.... The spillway was damaged early last week... not on Sunday, yesterday.. and apparently it was the county Sheriff that warned people to evacuate. I have no clue what Jerry was doing the rest of the week. Packing up his belongings? Or channeling his illegals? The author is not doing the progressive governor any favors by noting the majority of human beings in the path of destruction are Trump voters... One might conclude that Jerry, long time ignored the lack of maintenance of the earthen dam.
I am out here in fly over country and this melting of mud caught my attention last Tuesday.
I think Katrina also caused that to change a few years later, IIRC
Since the media wouldn’t cover it Trump may not have known about it.
Really wish Free Republic had an “edit comment” option. Apologize for the profanity. This just makes me so mad that I went off the rails a little. Sigh. (I have friends who live in that area and this is all on Obama’s incompetence — the problem has been know abort for many years — but now they are blaming Trump. Really ticks me off.)
The Sacramento Bee, the paper of the stupid.
Surely the person who should be on top of the situation is the governor of California, not the president. And maybe the governor is, but really, this idea that the President of the United States has some major role to play in natural disasters is politically unrealistic and constitutionally unsupported. The people affected will have their local and state governments all over this situation (and I hope they escape without a major flood) and rightly so, they are more easily able to communicate directly with the people through local media. What’s the president supposed to do, camp out in the lobby of city hall or the local Fox news outlet? (obviously for personal safety he should avoid any other TV studios). Then the minute somebody says the water’s breaking through, he could break into Family Guy or whatever and tell everybody, “run, this is the president, run, don’t be an idiot.” Or maybe just send Alec Baldwin, he does a pretty good impression.
If we could get them all to go tubing in this river, we could flush them back to Mexico
I don’t think you’re following. No mystery there since the news headlines are a complete mess. The “spillway damage” you refer to is on the main spillway, not the infamous emergency spillway. It has a supporting role, in that it caused the authorities to ease back on the rate of release, to minimize damage, allowing the lake level to rise above the rim of the emergency spillway. This was referred to as “using the emergency spillway” in press, as though some kind of emergency spillway gate had been opened.
Well, the emergency spillway didn’t respond well. There is no runoff apron for it, as pointed out by THE SIERRA CLUB, note well, in a hearing TWELVE YEARS AGO, in which they predicted, to a point of precision, what is happening at this hour. The state and federal officials harrumphed and stonewalled, and nothing was done.
So then they opened the main spillway gates wide, and to hell with the spillway damage. In fact, this does not seem to be a dire threat, since it effectively has truncated the length of the main spillway sluice, but this has remained constant, and is well below the gate level.
Now the question is what kind of repairs can be done to the emergency spillway runoff area. But it would be a mistake to call these “repairs” since this area was never engineered or altered in anyway to accept runoff, Just as THE SIERRA CLUB pointed out 12 years ago.
Well, I’m on tenterhooks, at this hour.
The rock dump is for the ‘mud’ emergency spillway? Not for the 300 foot hole washed out on the main spillway? The video/pictures I have seen appears a mountain of rock/ cement will be required to fill in both spillways? Doesn’t this span over 700 feet up from the base?
Wow, what jackass Smith is.
The MSM is the Country’s greatest threat.
I think the “rock dump” is for the emergency spillway, to fill in the gulleys and channels just below the spillway rim. I don’t think they are attending to the main spillway at this time, and are content if it remains stable.
Not sure about “700 feet”. The emergency spillway is 1700 feet long, laterally, and maybe that’s what you refer to. The “height”, by some measure, of the dam is 900 feet, so maybe the main spillway “hole” is 700 feet below the spillway rim. Obviously, I’m not sure where that figure comes from.
I blame the “news” for being mindless in these matters. They just spew out statements of all kinds which seem to be stamped with a confused history of acquistion. “All news is fake news.”
Personally, I think, a be prepare to flee warning, should have been sent out last Thursday... I think it was horrible to have thousands flee on a moments notice without having time to pack up meds, change of clothes, necessary documents, etc.
I got my 700 + number off the weather channel today. Tallest earthen dam in US. I have seen photos of that reservoir where the water level was darn near dry. That drying out changes the compactness of the dirt holding water over time.
His cabinet is still not complete, Dems are holding them. Blame Dems.
I bet that people would pay money for a video of Erika D. Smith getting fed to a gang of ISIS thugs.
It's like Little Barky 0'Muslim never existed...
Mark Twain wrote, “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”
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.