Oroville Dam

With all the news about the dam I have to think about the local disaster that happened here 128 years ago. The dam needed fixed but was ignored until disaster struck. History repeats itself.
Johnstown Flood

We are a land of 20-20 hindsight and second guessers.
No action...just reaction.
You can't get elected in America talking about the future....
An Interstate bridge has to fall before we can fund an inspection program.

I used to live between the Ohio and Mississippi River and at least once a year there was a threat of flood. I remember many times in high school they shut the school down and they bussed us out to the river to fill sandbags. In 1993 my family was forced to leave the town because they feared the levy was going to fail but they dynamited the levy on the Missouri side to relieve the pressure.

In the case of the Oroville Dam it appears they might get a second chance. They are confident enough they are letting the people of Oroville go back to their homes.

They have lowered the level considerably. The danger is all about the next series of storms starting tomorrow. The forecast is for 10 or 12" to hit the watershed of the dam. People need to be ready to evacuate again but there will probably be time for warning.

Interestingly enough, a book I'm currently reading compared Galveston, Texas' 1900 hurricane, and how the city responded to the aftermath, with Hurricane Katrina's damage to New Orleans.

In the 1900 hurricane in Galveston, 6,000 people died. After the hurricane, Galveston built a huge sea wall around the city, and actually elevated the city some 10 feet. They lifted entire buildings and filled dirt under them to raise the footage above sea level well above the original average of 4 feet. (I'm sure anyone on this board from Texas knows infinitely more about Galveston's history than I do).

Since Katrina, New Orleans basically has done nothing.

Which city is now best suited to cope with hurricanes?

News stated that mine and yours tax dollars are paying for the repairs.
Yep, hind sight as those preventive measures could have been taken 12 years ago

Yes Johnstown was such a screw up. The over flow pipe 8n the dam was removed and scraped and never replaced. So 5he dam crested and away we go. Try out running the water com7ng down the Valley with a steam engine. Far as i know the dam was never replaced. That dam out in CA is not as bad but it is still an earth fill dam. There was a live helicopter flying over it. Did you see how fast the water was going down that concrete chute! ! Looked like 45 or 5o mph. If they get another major storm with gobs of water I bet we will be reading about it.

there is a federal mandate and program that every bridge in the usa has to be inspected every 2 years---and if it is below a certain rating has to be inspected yearly.

I visited Johnstown last fall, something I've wanted to do for years. It's interesting on many levels. I never knew, for example, of the "Inclined Plane" funicular built after the flood to quickly evacuate residents.

There are many similarities between Johnstown and Oroville, and many big differences. The dam at Johnstown was originally well-constructed, but was taken over by folks who had no interest in operating it safely. It had failed and was reconstructed with several flaws, notably the removal of the outlet pipes, leaving only the spillway to control the water level. The wealthy club members who owned the dam wanted to drive carriages over it, so they lowered the dam to make the path wider. It was not a matter of if it would fail, but when.

The Oroville dam was not deliberately compromised, but it's apparent that problems with the main spillway escaped notice and should have been repaired. It also had a serious design flaw with the emergency spillway which outside groups identified in 2005, but which the cash-strapped state government declined to address and which the federal government did not make a requirement for the dam's permit renewal. (I'll note for the record that Arnold the Barbarian was governor at the time, and the Boy King was in charge in DC. Public safety was not a big concern for either one.)

What's common to both the Johnstown disaster and the near-disaster at Oroville is that the concerns of folks living below each dam were ignored by the dams' operators.

(quoted from post at 16:04:08 02/15/17) Interestingly enough, a book I'm currently reading compared Galveston, Texas' 1900 hurricane, and how the city responded to the aftermath, with Hurricane Katrina's damage to New Orleans.

In the 1900 hurricane in Galveston, 6,000 people died. After the hurricane, Galveston built a huge sea wall around the city, and actually elevated the city some 10 feet. They lifted entire buildings and filled dirt under them to raise the footage above sea level well above the original average of 4 feet. (I'm sure anyone on this board from Texas knows infinitely more about Galveston's history than I do).

Since Katrina, New Orleans basically has done nothing.

Which city is now best suited to cope with hurricanes?

Click to expand...

It's all in the mindset of the people in the area. IIRC NO spent money allocated for levee repair and construction on other, more PC projects.