User Panel
Quoted:
Its bedrock alright, just really rotten bedrock. Under the rotten stuff will be the more solid stuff of course but who knows the depth of that. The rotten stuff can easily have a channel cut through it View Quote That's just the surface, the weir extends down below that. The weir probably has as much height below grade as above it. |
|
Quoted:
The Emergency spill way should have 1500 feet in the middle about 6 feet shorter that the 100' on either side on the ends. Or the ends should have been 6 feet taller. Either way, the way it is now means it will never work as designed unless the design was to drain the lake in the event of a catastrophic flood that can't be controlled by the gates. View Quote Hmm...wonder if they could construct a temporary extension of the weir starting at the parking lot and then into the side of the hill, and perhaps have it be 3-4' taller. About where the parking lot meats the lake they could then tied it in on the downstream side to prevent a bit of a barrier to keep the high velocity water a the transition from scouring. Of course that isn't a trivial amount of excavation and construction work to do, but perhaps they don't have to dig all new footings, just dig to tie it into the hill better, and then somehow anchor the new poured concrete to the old weir. Way out of my lane though... |
|
Quoted:
While the maintence part is true, the waterlevel was below the spillway intake in December... it has come up 200+ feet. It hasn't been kept overfilled.. View Quote Looking at the seasonal curve of the graph I get that another 750,000 acre feet is due between now and June? I'm taking that as the normal increase in held water from Feb 1 to June 1. We already know that ain't gonna happen. It's all going over the spillway. Pick one. Feel free to correct my numbers/units and don't forget to add the 176% snow pack load. |
|
|
|
Quoted:
Holy shit! I have a relative there hauling rock to the dam. I did not know where he was living until he started putting pictures up on his facebook. One pic he is posting from his truck with a caption "Heading to Marysville for a load of rock then to the dam in orriville and hope it don't disappear". View Quote |
|
Quoted:
That's just the surface, the weir extends down below that. The weir probably has as much height below grade as above it. View Quote Did you see the cross section drawing that was posted about 20 times? What you see is all there is. The sill for the water to land on is even with the bottom of the weir. |
|
Quoted:
I see it from a completely different perspective now. It is still stupid to have built that parking lot there. That parking lot should be at least 10 feet taller than than the top of the spillway. View Quote You see the lower parking lots in older pics? Boat ramp from that lot goes down to a large lot and the boat ramp from that lot goes down to another good sized lot with a boat ramp. |
|
|
Quoted:
I see it from a completely different perspective now. It is still stupid to have built that parking lot there. That parking lot should be at least 10 feet taller than than the top of the spillway. View Quote nope, it has to be lower than the weir - or you have a dam. They wanted 1700 feet of weir at 901' elevation. The parking lot is a non-issue and is sacrificial to a flood event. No one is going to be parking there during a flood anyway |
|
Quoted:
Whatever you say... There are only tons of pics available some on this very page. ETA I stand corrected. that was backfilled and it does extend to the road. Damn. It is still a stupid design that is not going to last having water flow over it like that. View Quote Well to be fair it was designed as an EMERGENCY SPILLWAY. Viewed this way: "If water is going over the weir we got a real emergency and everybody down stream better start climbing right now" , the design make a bit more sense. This was the last ditch effort to stop over running the dam proper, the last line of defense to prevent complete dam failure. |
|
Quoted:
Its bedrock alright, just really rotten bedrock. Under the rotten stuff will be the more solid stuff of course but who knows the depth of that. The rotten stuff can easily have a channel cut through it View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Its bedrock alright, just really rotten bedrock. Under the rotten stuff will be the more solid stuff of course but who knows the depth of that. The rotten stuff can easily have a channel cut through it The gaps are where all the gold was that washed out and went downstream. |
|
Quoted:
NOT bedrock; see all the fissures and layers? Rock? Yes, but just the top, looser layer. Trust me buddy, I've worked behind a TBM at 400' BELOW what you call bedrock, drilling through solid dolomite limestone; what you're looking at is just large rocks holding hands!! View Quote Sigh. At least we've gone from "It's not even built on bedrock!" to "The bedrock isn't good enough!" Bedrock isn't some new discovery from the 60 years since the dam was built. |
|
In other news: https://youtu.be/fJpl1hm1-qg
the gravel pit I work at is switching over to riprap to help with this dam break. |
|
|
|
Quoted:
Sigh. At least we've gone from "It's not even built on bedrock!" to "The bedrock isn't good enough!" Bedrock isn't some new discovery from the 60 years since the dam was built. View Quote I'd bet the construction / engineering documents specify that they had rip down to both reasonably solid rock and some minimum depth (its a gravity structure, it has to have some minimum amount of width and weight to work). |
|
|
The spillway being damaged was a bad thing but why on earth did they decide to use the emergency spillway?
Isn't an emergency spillway an absolute last resort, Hail Mary to save the main dam incase shit goes sideways on the main spillway. As in the main spillway won't flow any water for whatever reason. Why didn't they ramp up the output on the spillway and monitor the erosion early on before deciding on the E spillway option? After all said and done, they did ramp up to 100K cfs and the spillway wasn't damaged too much more. Didn't the E spillway only put out 12K cfs. If so, their cost-benefit analysis ration was way off. |
|
Quoted:
Fast forward through the video for helicopters hauling rock. https://www.facebook.com/KCRA3/videos/vb.115763581513/10155029133956514/?type=3&theater View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
Is there any pictures or video of helicopters moving rocks? I curious to see if I can tell who is doing it. Looks like PJ Helicopters with their civilian UH-60 Black Hawks. |
|
|
Quoted:
The spillway being damaged was a bad thing but why on earth did they decide to use the emergency spillway? Isn't an emergency spillway an absolute last resort, Hail Mary to save the main dam incase shit goes sideways on the main spillway. As in the main spillway won't flow any water for whatever reason. Why didn't they ramp up the output on the spillway and monitor the erosion early on before deciding on the E spillway option? After all said and done, they did ramp up to 100K cfs and the spillway wasn't damaged too much more. Didn't the E spillway only put out 12K cfs. If so, their cost-benefit analysis ration was way off. View Quote It's like they thought it would be 'fun' to give it a go or some stupid shit like that. |
|
Quoted:
The spillway being damaged was a bad thing but why on earth did they decide to use the emergency spillway? Isn't an emergency spillway an absolute last resort, Hail Mary to save the main dam incase shit goes sideways on the main spillway. As in the main spillway won't flow any water for whatever reason. Why didn't they ramp up the output on the spillway and monitor the erosion early on before deciding on the E spillway option? After all said and done, they did ramp up to 100K cfs and the spillway wasn't damaged too much more. Didn't the E spillway only put out 12K cfs. If so, their cost-benefit analysis ration was way off. View Quote Probably because they had no idea if the broken primary spillway could do what it is doing. It's not like they designed the thing to work if half the spillway was gone. They were trying to shift as much load off of the spillway as they could. Unfortunately, the timing isn't working. Keeping it set at 55 or 65 kcfs wasn't going to do the job with the rest of the storms heading in. - and the espillway showed some flaw that created a potentially dangerous situation. |
|
|
|
Quoted:
I see it from a completely different perspective now. It is still stupid to have built that parking lot there. That parking lot should be at least 10 feet taller than than the top of the spillway. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
and they show exactly what he says it shows. The weir structure runs from the dam some 1700'. Its 900' from the dam to the parking lot. I see it from a completely different perspective now. It is still stupid to have built that parking lot there. That parking lot should be at least 10 feet taller than than the top of the spillway. |
|
Quoted:
Kinda like Congress spending more and more money, the National Debt gets higher, nothing happens, so they keep doing it. "Hey, it didn't happen on MY watch." View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
True, water supply is part of it. If you read the source I linked on page 131-ish, it was approved for 2.4M Acre Feet per year. They've been running it 50% above that, and therefore lost FERC licensing, since the dam was not designed to be run at that capacity. They planned on having it near double that, at 4.1M AF/year by 2010 "with some modifications". The paper is from 1991, before any of the crap started. All CA Dams have been keeping thier "low pool" higher and higher, making these floods a certainty. It's Engineering a disaster and then blaming the original Design team for it not handling 150% stress for the last 20% of the life of the dam. NOW, add in lack of maintenance. Lack of inspections to decide if maintenance is needed, actually. CA is going to flood, maybe not this week, maybe not this year, but these reservoirs are not going to hold if they keep trying to push the limits year after year after year. Then try to declare "EMERGENCY!" when their fuckup goes sideways. The dam failures I've seen since y2k are all due to the increased water storage due to "Global Warming going to be drought forever" hype, not just in CA. Kinda like Congress spending more and more money, the National Debt gets higher, nothing happens, so they keep doing it. "Hey, it didn't happen on MY watch." Fiat money doesn't follow the laws of Physics. Ignore physics and think it's too hard all you want, but it isn't going to ignore you. We need to get the truth out to the media that matters before the blame train goes into full swing. This is NOT "Fake News". It isn't even abnormal runoff yet and they've got the dam failing on purpose, that's the message that needs to get out. How do you get the UK DailyMail or whatever site is covering this to read the 1991 Paper that says this is going to happen, and CA does it anyway without a FERC license? Get it to Brietbart? To Drudge? Somebody to write it in a form that the modern short attention span people can handle without sounding overly dramatic and pissy about it? |
|
Quoted:
The spillway being damaged was a bad thing but why on earth did they decide to use the emergency spillway? Isn't an emergency spillway an absolute last resort, Hail Mary to save the main dam incase shit goes sideways on the main spillway. As in the main spillway won't flow any water for whatever reason. Why didn't they ramp up the output on the spillway and monitor the erosion early on before deciding on the E spillway option? After all said and done, they did ramp up to 100K cfs and the spillway wasn't damaged too much more. Didn't the E spillway only put out 12K cfs. If so, their cost-benefit analysis ration was way off. View Quote At this point of Monday Morning Quarterbacking it is pretty clear they should have never tested the E Spillway. They almost had a catastrophic failure and had to evac 200000. Upping the release of the main spillway and monitoring the erosion of the flume, in hindsight was much safe in the short term. The problem is can the damaged flume of the main spillway survive every drop of H2O in that water shed? Time will tell. |
|
Quoted:
Sigh. At least we've gone from "It's not even built on bedrock!" to "The bedrock isn't good enough!" Bedrock isn't some new discovery from the 60 years since the dam was built. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
<strong>Quoted:</strong>
NOT bedrock; see all the fissures and layers? Rock? Yes, but just the top, looser layer. Trust me buddy, I've worked behind a TBM at 400' BELOW what you call bedrock, drilling through solid dolomite limestone; what you're looking at is just large rocks holding hands!! Sigh. At least we've gone from "It's not even built on bedrock!" to "The bedrock isn't good enough!" Bedrock isn't some new discovery from the 60 years since the dam was built. It fits though. Why are we do we have a 147 page thread on this? Because of repeated erosion/collapse issues. Between the primary spillway break and the smaller sink holes near the parking lot, there is definite evidence of subterranean water flow. Plus the erosion pattern behind the spillway is a bit odd too. 'bedrock' that is significantly fractured will allow a lot more water flow. |
|
Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs Too bad the river doesn't have that capacity. |
|
I've been following this since the beginning but seeing photos that show scale is still pretty awe inspiring.
Though saying that, please understand that I know there are tens of thousands of people that are suffering because of this fuck up. This is also an important lesson for engineers that are responsible for the safety of the public. Don't sign off on something you aren't sure of, bonuses or management pressure be damned. It'll all work out until it doesn't, then it's your ass that's going to have your license pulled, terminated, and possibly prosecuted. Or worse than that, you kill people. Quoted:
new pictures scrapped from http://pixel-ca-dwr.photoshelter.com/galleries/C0000OxvlgXg3yfg/G00003YCcmDTx48Y/Oroville-Spillway-Damage http://i.imgur.com/WqRSlmU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VSbRy2d.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VRMkgfK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mCOYeH5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/UTwmRbU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/7vtiGhC.jpg View Quote |
|
Quoted:
Probably because they had no idea if the broken primary spillway could do what it is doing. It's not like they designed the thing to work if half the spillway was gone. They were trying to shift as much load off of the spillway as they could. Unfortunately, the timing isn't working. Keeping it set at 55 or 65 kcfs wasn't going to do the job with the rest of the storms heading in. - and the espillway showed some flaw that created a potentially dangerous situation. View Quote They could have ramped it up for an hour, then back down to inspect. They could have gone WFO and tried to blast away the remaining part of the spillway at the bottom. Making a clear area for the water to fly off the top part without slamming it to the sides and causing the erosion would have been a plan worth trying. The large debris could have been dozed out of the channel when the water was cut back. |
|
Quoted:
north valley community foundation Nvcf I know board members, the money is being distributed straight to the local points of need. I'd prefer to not handle peoples funds. Elks lodge has a bar! View Quote Direct link for donations: http://nvcf.org/fund/oroville-evacuation-fund/ |
|
Quoted:
The spillway being damaged was a bad thing but why on earth did they decide to use the emergency spillway? Isn't an emergency spillway an absolute last resort, Hail Mary to save the main dam incase shit goes sideways on the main spillway. As in the main spillway won't flow any water for whatever reason. Why didn't they ramp up the output on the spillway and monitor the erosion early on before deciding on the E spillway option? After all said and done, they did ramp up to 100K cfs and the spillway wasn't damaged too much more. Didn't the E spillway only put out 12K cfs. If so, their cost-benefit analysis ration was way off. View Quote In hindsight, you're probably right. Going forward, things may not be as bleak as people think, if the upper section of the primary spillway is actually on bedrock like they've said it is and can be stabilized. The erosion from the primary spillway seems to have stabilized at this rate of flow, but nobody knows how much water they can flow and for how long without damaging it further. It could be they did, in fact, want to see what would happen when they flowed some water over the e-spillway so they'd know what to expect when they HAVE to in a week or a month. |
|
Quoted:
Too bad the river doesn't have that capacity. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs Too bad the river doesn't have that capacity. That is a failure on the state's part. They either didn't keep it dredged like they were supposed to or over the last 70 years they let people build in the flood plane of the river. |
|
Quoted:
It wasn't a change. A couple pages back there was a YouTube video documentary/puff piece that included Ronaldus Maximus dedicating the damn. He mentioned storage in his dedication. It was always meant for storage. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
Is there any documentation on that change from flood control to storage? Everything I can find says it was intended for flood control, hydroelectric generation, and water storage. It wasn't a change. A couple pages back there was a YouTube video documentary/puff piece that included Ronaldus Maximus dedicating the damn. He mentioned storage in his dedication. It was always meant for storage. Godhead though he may be, some politician yackety-schmackety does not a design intention make. |
|
Quoted:
That is a failure on the state's part. They either didn't keep it dredged like they were supposed to or over the last 70 years they let people build in the flood plane of the river. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs Too bad the river doesn't have that capacity. That is a failure on the state's part. They either didn't keep it dredged like they were supposed to or over the last 70 years they let people build in the flood plane of the river. Flood plane on a treadmill? |
|
Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs That would be a show for sure, open her all the way up. drop that lake in a hurry! bye town of Oroville. |
|
Quoted:
Fiat money doesn't follow the laws of Physics. Ignore physics and think it's too hard all you want, but it isn't going to ignore you. We need to get the truth out to the media that matters before the blame train goes into full swing. This is NOT "Fake News". It isn't even abnormal runoff yet and they've got the dam failing on purpose, that's the message that needs to get out. How do you get the UK DailyMail or whatever site is covering this to read the 1991 Paper that says this is going to happen, and CA does it anyway without a FERC license? Get it to Brietbart? To Drudge? Somebody to write it in a form that the modern short attention span people can handle without sounding overly dramatic and pissy about it? View Quote Your link doesn't say that something like this is going to happen. In fact, it echoes DWR in saying "Numerous faults were mapped in the foundations of the Oroville Dam and Hyatt Powerplant. However, none appeared to be significantly threatening since displacement along the faults would be minimal and unlikely to occur." |
|
Quoted:
The Capacity is also a few hundred thousand AF less on that plaque than they've been stating on the current website and news. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
Notice the spillway capacity says 650,000 cfs The Capacity is also a few hundred thousand AF less on that plaque than they've been stating on the current website and news. So they build the infrastructure downstream after this dam handcuffing it. Because this thing can handle more than I thought. |
|
|
Quoted:
If it extended down below grade equally as far as what we can see, I'm sure that would have been shown in the cross section. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/268039/Screenshot-2017-02-12-12-10-57-1-145248.png View Quote OMG! You're right! That's a detailed dimensional, as built drawing of the spillway and definitely not some hand drawn illustration that was made for a later report by some guy that didn't reference the original drawing. Look you can even see the voids under the weir that they are trying to fill! You should alert the media! |
|
Quoted:
At this point of Monday Morning Quarterbacking it is pretty clear they should have never tested the E Spillway. They almost had a catastrophic failure and had to evac 200000. Upping the release of the main spillway and monitoring the erosion of the flume, in hindsight was much safe in the short term. The problem is can the damaged flume of the main spillway survive every drop of H2O in that water shed? Time will tell. View Quote I have been thinking all along not to use the E spillway but I wouldn't want to be there having to make those decisions. Naturally the decision is so no one gets hurt or killed but there are many other political things that come into play. I would assume there were others there who didnt want to use the untested E spillway but someone higher up made that decision. |
|
|
Quoted:
Fiat money doesn't follow the laws of Physics. Ignore physics and think it's too hard all you want, but it isn't going to ignore you. We need to get the truth out to the media that matters before the blame train goes into full swing. This is NOT "Fake News". It isn't even abnormal runoff yet and they've got the dam failing on purpose, that's the message that needs to get out. How do you get the UK DailyMail or whatever site is covering this to read the 1991 Paper that says this is going to happen, and CA does it anyway without a FERC license? Get it to Brietbart? To Drudge? Somebody to write it in a form that the modern short attention span people can handle without sounding overly dramatic and pissy about it? View Quote You've obviously never worked around government employees. They don't have to do something "on purpose" to royally fuck something up worse than imaginable. It's not like they have to worry about being fired for being lazy and making poor choices. |
|
Quoted:
Seriously this. It's like they thought it would be 'fun' to give it a go or some stupid shit like that. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
The spillway being damaged was a bad thing but why on earth did they decide to use the emergency spillway? Isn't an emergency spillway an absolute last resort, Hail Mary to save the main dam incase shit goes sideways on the main spillway. As in the main spillway won't flow any water for whatever reason. Why didn't they ramp up the output on the spillway and monitor the erosion early on before deciding on the E spillway option? After all said and done, they did ramp up to 100K cfs and the spillway wasn't damaged too much more. Didn't the E spillway only put out 12K cfs. If so, their cost-benefit analysis ration was way off. It's like they thought it would be 'fun' to give it a go or some stupid shit like that. Being a good emergency manager, especially with complex systems is not fucking easy. If you aren't paranoid enough this happens. If you are paranoid enough, people think you are ...well....paranoid. normalcy bias. that's the bitch of being good at safety stuff...if your fucking bad ass ..nothing bad happens and nobody notices. It takes a supremely technically competent person to have enough confidence to do the job well. If your not that good at it...you had better be damn good at managing emergencies. |
|
|
Sign up for the ARFCOM weekly newsletter and be entered to win a free ARFCOM membership. One new winner* is announced every week!
You will receive an email every Friday morning featuring the latest chatter from the hottest topics, breaking news surrounding legislation, as well as exclusive deals only available to ARFCOM email subscribers.
AR15.COM is the world's largest firearm community and is a gathering place for firearm enthusiasts of all types.
From hunters and military members, to competition shooters and general firearm enthusiasts, we welcome anyone who values and respects the way of the firearm.
Subscribe to our monthly Newsletter to receive firearm news, product discounts from your favorite Industry Partners, and more.
Copyright © 1996-2024 AR15.COM LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Any use of this content without express written consent is prohibited.
AR15.Com reserves the right to overwrite or replace any affiliate, commercial, or monetizable links, posted by users, with our own.