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A comment on Areas near Sacramento evacuated as Oroville spillway collapse feared. Parent comment

Re:Areas near Sacramento evacuated as Oroville spillway coll... by khuey on Sunday February 12, 2017 @11:45PM (#13633184)
The emergency spillway is around 30 feet high, the dam itself is 770 feet high. The amount of water released from a failure of the emergency spillway will be enormous, but still much smaller than the amount of water released by a complete dam failure.
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Re:Areas near Sacramento evacuated as Oroville spillway coll... by k26dr on Sunday February 12, 2017 @11:56PM (#13633226)
To clarify, the emergency spillway is 30 ft below the top of the dam, not 30 ft high
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Re:Areas near Sacramento evacuated as Oroville spillway coll... by ChuckMcM on Monday February 13, 2017 @12:39AM (#13633361)
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article132356269.html provides an excellent description of the challenge. The hillside where the emergency spillway is would be at risk.
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Re:Areas near Sacramento evacuated as Oroville spillway coll... by verytrivial on Monday February 13, 2017 @08:56AM (#13635173)
Excellent link, thanks. I found the following comment sobering:

"Countryman: It’s not going to be the (main) embankment failure, but it’s a failure. If it does happen, there’s nothing saying that the ground is going to stay where it is. That force of water will start tearing that hill apart​,​ and it could eat back into the reservoir and drain the reservoir."

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