Yolo County has opened a shelter to assist those affected by the Oroville Dam spillway evacuation at the Yolo County Fairgrounds in the home arts building, 1250 East Gum Avenue, Woodland. Massive state response in place for dam emergency State officials have activated hundreds of people to help deal with the Oroville Dam crisis, sending 100 California Highway Patrol officers to the region and placing 1,200 California National Guard members on notice that they may be needed.

More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.

California Gov. Jerry Brown asked President Trump on Friday to declare a major disaster in the state because of damage from a month of storms as more rain hit the south. Brown’s letter said a powerful series of January storms brought “relentless” rain and high winds that caused flooding, mudslides, evacuations, erosion, power outages and at least eight deaths. Northern California was hardest hit. Brown said the storm system was so severe and widespread that state and local governments need federal assistance to continue dealing with the problems it created.

For the first time since Oroville Dam was completed in 1968, water from its storm-swollen reservoir overtopped the emergency spillway Saturday, sending sheets of water down a forested hillside and adding to the murk and debris churning in the Feather River below. State officials said they did not expect the flows to cause flooding in Oroville or other communities downstream, but the emergency releases underscored the perilous situation confronting the operators of California’s second-largest reservoir for the rest of this extraordinarily rainy winter.

 

Officials in California prepared to implement a never-used emergency plan to release millions of cubic feet of water building up behind the Oroville Dam after a gaping hole formed in its spillway. Bill Croyle, deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the dam itself remains in no danger of breaching, however due to unprecedented amounts of storm water flowing into the reservoir after torrential rain in the region, the water level is now 14 feet away from rising over the dam.