Posted on 02/14/2017 10:43:54 AM PST by Trumpnation
Footage of crews using helicopters yesterday to move large bags of rocks into Oroville emergency dam spillway.
Jerry Brown should have taken some of the billions he’s spent on the train to nowhere and fixed the dam.
A UH-60 will only sling load about 2 cubic yards per load, max.
Long day!
They need the Erickson Sky Cranes, the CH-53D/E or the Chinooks.
The dam is not a problem, the spillway is the problem
Well I posted a critical comment about this attempt last night. However, when I viewed this and then looked at a local CBS video as well, it looks like a better staged operation than what I had first anticipated.
Rip-rap rock in bags to hold it together makes a good substrate for this sort of repair IMHO. In my experience, you can confine it with concrete walls and possibly top it with concrete. It allows a concrete topping to have a lower substrate that won’t wash out from under a capping layer of concrete.
Absolutely yes. They were warned over 12 years ago that this might happen. This type of work has no glamour or flash to it. You get no ‘Green Credits’ for it, but it must be done.
Hopefully, we get at least a full week without more heavy rains.
Heavy rain in four days.
My understanding is that there is a new storm expected to hit the area, sometime on Thursday.
That gives the engineers 4 days to protect, yet not solve the problem .
Well, 4 days is better than 4 hours.
Hope the road crews make the best of it.
Temperatures are high this week too, so that alone will help to dry some top layers of soil.
That’s a pretty expensive way to move rock, not to mention slooow.
California National Guard has a dozen new CH-47f Chinooks.
I’m flabbergasted they aren’t using them.
Just last week, Gov Jerry Brown and California Democrats spent much energy trying to sway the Trump administration to approve a $647 million federal grant for a train rail project in the San Francisco Bay Area. An underfunded unnecessary project where costs continually climb, and they want the feds to kick in money to pay for it. Jerry Brown is not expending energy on fixing broken infrastructure, he is concentrating on unneeded projects based on politically correct dreams. He is a grand loser.
True dat !
Need to bring in heavy duty helicopters who can drop more than 2 cubic feet of stone gabbons.
You folks are in my prayers.
The window she is broken and the rain is coming in.
If someone doesn’t fix it I’ll be soaked clear to my skin.
But if we wait a day or two the rain will go away,
And we don’t need a window on such a sunny day!
The spillway she is broken and the rain is coming down.
If someone doesn’t fix it we all will surely drown.
But if we wait a week or two the rain will go away,
And we don’t need no spillway on such a sunny day!
Actually their “warning” was a lawsuit by environmental activists... the reality is its an EMERGENCY spillway, and its by design accepted that damage may indeed occur if it is ever used. Erosion etc is accepted consequence.. the environs wanted them to concrete pave the entire emergency spillway, something that was not remotely justifiable from a cost or maintenance perspective...
And like it or not, to date, the spillway has not failed, its done its job...
What’s disturbing is how bad the original spillway had to be failing to wind up with the giant hole in it that it developed.. someone had been skipping on inspections and maintenance I suspect... or redirecting money elsewhere that was to be used for it, which is usually the case when this sort of things comes about.
Thank you for explaining the background of this emergency.
I would even know to ask about those specific questions. The predicament, though regrettable makes more sense now.
That giant hole of erosion is what’s wrong now.
The severity of that crater could have been avoided or at least better forecast and pro-actively prepared for.
It ain’t the moving of the rock, it’s the placing it where you need it and in the necessary amount of time that makes a helo more than worth the money!
Back in 1981, Chevron had a CH-46 hauling gabions (similar to chain link fence bags) full of rock to make drill rig foundation pads in the swamps of southern Sudan.
Big Bucks, but the only realistic way to do the job.
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