Dam in CA coming from together....

Heres a picture showing the erosion that's forming below the emergency spilway:
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Everskyward said:
This link was posted before, but it has the most in-depth information I have seen. I'm also impressed at the civility of the forum and how they are able to stay on topic. It must be strongly moderated. ;)

https://www.metabunk.org/oroville-dam-spillway-failure.t8381/
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You know... I saw that and I swear I looked at the last page and it had a weird post date. I thought it was some weird forum where the dates worked in reverse a la a blog as opposed to a forum. My mistake.

I still like my 3 points I had to glean all on my own! =D
 
PaulS said:
I would suggest that a dam with an emergency spillover made of earth be redone with concrete, pretty stupid if you ask me. I would suggest that a dam with a main spillway that has cracked the year before receive a more thorough repair job than a patch job. I would suggest that having an earthen dam that holds back that amount of water above a city with 190,000 people in it's path if it's failed should never have been built of earth. This reminds me of when New Orleans flooded, incompetence and corruption.
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Meh. It's no different than 172 seat rail.
 
MAKG1 said:
You mean like the 172 seat rail AD? You inspect it periodically and limit its travel, but replacement and redesign was never required.
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Actually, Cessna provided for installation of a reel device to prevent the seat from sliding.
 
In my mind, any human contrivance which is going to do battle with Mother Nature (dams, buildings, bridges, airplanes etc) will have a failure rate...one which will never be zero.
 
Believe it or not but there are many more damns across the country that are ready to fail. The FERC keeps track of flooding cycles and we are due for a couple massive floods in the coming years/decades that will eliminate some dams completely.
This is something we have had almost a hundred years to prepare for, we desperately need some major infrastructure repair and replacement across this country but no one wants to be the politician to find the money we need to do it. Unfortunately it will take a major disaster like a dam coming down to help get the ball rolling. They knew full well what would happen if water were to spill at this dam yat notning was ever done, there will be a nice little hearing about this and people will get hung out to dry but at these times it is too little and too late.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
In my mind, any human contrivance which is going to do battle with Mother Nature (dams, buildings, bridges, airplanes etc) will have a failure rate...one which will never be zero.
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The History Channel had this series, which Karen and I enjoyed:

51%2BaSaoHrbL._AC_UL320_SR226,320_.jpg


IIRC, Hoover Dam was speculated to be one of the last signs of man to disappear. Or they may have just been using that particular dam as a typical example.

Anyway, quite thought-provoking.
 
FastEddieB said:
The History Channel had this series, which Karen and I enjoyed:

51%2BaSaoHrbL._AC_UL320_SR226,320_.jpg


IIRC, Hoover Dam was speculated to be one of the last signs of man to disappear. Or they may have just been using that particular dam as a typical example.

Anyway, quite thought-provoking.
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Actually, our dams would fail rather quickly without our ability to open the gates to control the lake levels they are holding up. Most would fail after one or two rainy seasons when the lake overtook the dam.
 
Acrodustertoo said:
Actually, our dams would fail rather quickly without our ability to open the gates to control the lake levels they are holding up. Most would fail after one or two rainy seasons when the lake overtook the dam.
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Could be - I'm not an engineer.

I recall they speculated thousands of years, but we watched it along time ago.
 
FastEddieB said:
Could be - I'm not an engineer.

I recall they speculated thousands of years, but we watched it along time ago.
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They are clowns. Once the lake overtook the dam it would start undercutting the sides and failure wouldn't take very long.
 
FastEddieB said:
The whole series in under 3 minutes!

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I am goign to check that out. It is available for streaming from History Channel. I have always been interested in what would happen after we disappear of the Earth. I know nature will win out.
 
flhrci said:
I am goign to check that out. It is available for streaming from History Channel. I have always been interested in what would happen after we disappear of the Earth. I know nature will win out.
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Go check out a ghost town and it is plain as day, everything is cover in vegetaion within a year or two and the rest just rots away at its own pace. Our major infrastructure like roads, bridges and dams would disappear pretty quick without any maintenance being performed. Remember the I-35 bridge that fell down in Minnesota? they blamed than one on pigeon ****!
 
Warnings unheeded for years. CA had more important things to do. Long list of "important" things.
 
Mutts said:
Warnings unheeded for years. CA had more important things to do. Long list of "important" things.
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Blinded by the drought, no water to manage, let the dam projects go was probably part of the mindset.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Acrodustertoo said:
Remember the I-35 bridge that fell down in Minnesota? they blamed than one on pigeon ****!
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I do. And it was found to be a design error. Of course, adding 20% to the bridges static load over the years and then piling 250 tons of construction supplies on it didn't help either. Corrosion was not found to be a major factor.
 
Glen Canyon dam first used it's overflow tunnels (it is not designed to overtop) in 1983 and to the worry of everyone the water coming out of them turned red (from eroding tunnel walls).
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-29/magazine/tm-62672_1_hoover-dam
People were worried but the dam held. Sounds like a similar situation here. Overflow system that has never been used is going to be stressed. Hope it holds. We shall see.
 
FastEddieB said:
The History Channel had this series, which Karen and I enjoyed:

51%2BaSaoHrbL._AC_UL320_SR226,320_.jpg


IIRC, Hoover Dam was speculated to be one of the last signs of man to disappear. Or they may have just been using that particular dam as a typical example.

Anyway, quite thought-provoking.
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I remember that series and enjoyed it as well.
 
I remember reading a book on the same subject, but I don't recall how dams faired.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
In my mind, any human contrivance which is going to do battle with Mother Nature (dams, buildings, bridges, airplanes etc) will have a failure rate...one which will never be zero.
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True that failure proof is impossible but the goal is for a high level of failure resistance. How high a level is proportional to how much money you want to spend.
 
Well, for about as good an example as you can get, google current pictures of the city of Chernobyl. Vegetation and animals have largely taken over the restricted areas, and seem to be flourishing. There's obviously a visible human footprint with the buildings/infrastructure, but most everything has a lot of overgrowth. The only major component missing is having a complete failure of a local dam.
 
Is everyone's spellcheck messing up? Can we please call them "dams"? Ugh! Let's save "damn" for that other thing!
 
Everskyward said:
I remember reading a book on the same subject, but I don't recall how dams faired.
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I wonder if it was the same one I read, "Engineering Disasters"?
I cannot find it online now (it's not "Lessons Learned") but it was a good read.
 
Jerry W flys out of Auburn and posts fequently on YouTube. This flight is up from Oakland to Auburn showing all the flooding along the way to the Oroville Dam. At 52:30 or so they walked up to Lake Clementine dam before road closures....pretty impressive the power of water.

https://youtu.be/CWrd1oP6lKs
 
Big wall that holds back water on left coast is about to come from together.

:)
 
Davecat said:
Jerry W flys out of Auburn and posts fequently on YouTube. This flight is up from Oakland to Auburn showing all the flooding along the way to the Oroville Dam. At 52:30 or so they walked up to Lake Clementine dam before road closures....pretty impressive the power of water.

https://youtu.be/CWrd1oP6lKs
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Just don't pay attention to all the reckless flying.....

At least some of the flooding (in the flats) is intentional. It's "groundwater recharging," and it's very widespread right now. And if you're thinking of landing on the grass at Frazier Lake, bring your floatplane. The whole thing is under water.

There are several spots between Oakland and Sacramento that are supposed to flood, every season. That's how they keep from flooding other parts of the Delta. Further north, there are a hell of a lot of rice fields, and they were flooded even during the drought.
 
Hoover dam has spillways through the bedrock. So in theory water wouldn't overtop it.

And in the case of Oroville, the auxiliary spillway would erode away, releasing a bunch of water. So the dam itself would be around for a long time with water going in a different direction.
 
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