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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Oroville Dam: Have you bugged out already?



You may want to if you haven’t done so already. It can be nothing, or it can get biblical over there folks.
According to Los Angeles Times, more than 100,000 people were ordered to flee to higher ground Sunday afternoon after the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam developed a hole, prompting fears it could collapse. With rain expected later this week, things can get really bad really fast.

Now this isn’t a storm or winter blizzard we’re talking about. If the dam collapses and you’re down range its bye bye. With such high-stakes I at least wouldn’t be risking it and would get the hell out of there until the crisis is resolved. After all this is precisely the kind of thing we prepare for. Taking such risks makes no sense if it can be at all avoided.

Oh, remember what I always say about bugging out and bugging in not being a matter of choice? well… this.
FerFAL

Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.

1 comment:

two crows said...

They are very lucky they have advance notice. In historic dam disasters many others were not as fortunate. If an authority tells you a dam upstream is going to burst, listen to him.

In the US we focus on water dam disasters due to their prevalence, past disasters, and quantity of stored energy but we should also keep in mind industrial dams too. The Val di Stava disaster and the Aberfan disaster (more of a mudslide) show we must be aware of all potential sources of disaster uphill, including industrial.

I'd be very uncomfortable living near a river bed in general. There is a well written, moving article, "When the River Rises" from Texas Monthly's May 2016 issue about the 2015 Wimberly Floods. I won't link it here to avoid spam filters but you can find it with google. (31 dead.) In that case there was no dam to break, but an unexpected (but should have been expected) confluence of thunderstorms.

From reading about this Oroville Dam it is uncharacteristic of many other historic dam disasters. Hopefully because of this they will have enough time to repair it.

But now they're having to use helicopters to fly in construction materials for repair. How expensive must that be? But then again the government of California has never seemed that concerned with wisely managing their finances in my lifetime.