Press. voanews.com
Nearly 200,000
people remained under evacuation orders Monday in the western U.S. state of
California while authorities tried to repair erosion of an emergency spillway
at the country's tallest dam to keep it from failing and unleashing
uncontrolled flood waters.
The immediate
emergency that led to the evacuation appeared to have waned; but, officials
were assessing how to fix the overflow channel at the Oroville Dam before
deciding whether it was safe to let people return to their homes in rural
communities 240 kilometers northeast of San Francisco.
"Now that
there is no more water going over the emergency spillway, though it brings
stability to the situation, there are still a lot of unknowns," Butte
County Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters late Sunday. "We're not at the
point yet where we can make decisions about whether or not it is safe to
repopulate areas."
The 235-meter
dam, which holds back Lake Oroville, was not in danger of collapse. Authorities
were releasing 2,830 cubic meters of water per second from the main spillway on
Sunday, bringing down the reservoir so that there was no more flow into the
emergency channel. Officials are trying to drop the dam's water level by 15
meters ahead of more storms forecast to hit the region on Wednesday.
The emergency is
the result of winter storms that brought relief to the most populous U.S. state
after four years of drought, but, water levels behind the dam forced officials
to use the emergency spillway for the first time in almost 50 years. The
evacuation was ordered after engineers spotted a hole in the concrete lip of
the emergency spillway.
In addition,
there was unexpected erosion in the main spillway, with heavy rains creating a
60-meter-long crevice 9 meters deep, although authorities said that cave-in
appears to have ended. California Governor Jerry Brown said, "It's clear
the circumstances are complex and rapidly changing. The state is directing all
necessary personnel and resources to deal with this very serious
situation."
Evacuees jammed
local roads to escape the region Sunday after officials warned them of the
emergency spillway's possible imminent collapse, telling them the evacuation
order for the valley communities below the dam was "not a drill."
"I'm just
shocked," one resident, Greg Levias, said as he left with his wife, two
sons and a dog just three weeks after moving to the community. Lake Oroville
plays a role in California's government-run water delivery network, supplying
water for vast agricultural fields in the middle part of the Pacific coastal
state and water for residents and businesses in the populous southern part.
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