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Wow. Remember the construction worker who lost is job from posting a damaged mess (spillway) photo to social media? Looks like he captured critical evidence that no other photographic angles or media was able to capture (likely due to the lower river view angle access the media relied on). The other media photographs inadvertently "hid" this pile of massive thick slabs that collapsed just above the original "hole" blowout failure area (angles of photos from lower spillway). The pile of these thick slabs (estimated near 6 feet thick avg)** didn't move during the earlier 33,000cfs and 45,000 cfs flows. ALL of the rest of the standard thinner spillway slabs were washed away. This is also a testament to the sheer weight of these monsters.

Only until the spillway was cranked up to 100,000 cfs did these massive slab blocks disappear. That is the time that the curious "Large Block" appeared at the end of the Main Spillway Chute - lodged against one of the flip bucket Chute Blocks.

That key picture from the worker makes him a hero for capturing critical evidence. This points to a larger problem of "void filling" on a big scale. DWR may be facing a difficult position as they are expecting 75% of the repair funding from FEMA. But, under FEMA's rules, this funding can only be from designated "disasters". If determined that the spillway crisis was from "negligent maintenance and/or repair activity (incompetent)", then CA & DWR risk losing the FEMA funding.

**distance to blocks from camera shot plus the relevant size of the reference dimensions of the upper main spillway seams.

Evidence of 9+ foot thick Large Block of concrete at the bottom of Main Spillway? Large Void Chasms under Spillway? DSOD Inspectors told not to fix until damaged?

Fig 8. from article - original pic taken by worker & posted on social media - was fired over this. Yet provides the only huge critical evidence no other pictures captured.

Fig 2. from article

Fig 3. from article

Fig 4. from article

Article clip: === Evidence of 9+ foot thick Large Block of concrete at the bottom of Main Spillway? Large Void Chasms under Spillway? DSOD Inspectors told not to fix until damaged?

Evidence of a 9+ foot thick Large Block of concrete at the bottom of the Main Spillway? Reveals dangerously large voids have formed in the past near the spillway"blowout" failure area? DSOD Inspectors told not to fix until damage occurs from "heavy flows"? Will this evidence of "Large Blocks" in "void fill" from possible under spillway slab erosion chasms derail DWR's narrative of any known failure indicators?

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - In January 12, 2000, a California Division of Safety of Dams (DSOD) Inspector had noted areas identified as "drummy patches" on the main spillway [1]. These "patches" were acoustic echo tones that indicated voids large enough, from the dB level of acoustic response, to where the Inspector felt these were important enough to note these findings in the report. Typical "sounding" methods, in the early dam spillway inspection era, involved dragging heavy chains or hammering the top concrete to create acoustic stimulation. Alarmingly, this DSOD report stated that "No treatment is proposed until they [drummy patches] are damaged by heavy flow." Why wait for the spillway to be "damaged" from a "heavy flow" condition? This report was 17 years ago. Was DWR operating in this "wait until failure" methodology instead of proactively investigating & fixing potential catastrophic failures? This DSOD inspection report seems to infer a "reactive" failure response atmosphere. Is this key to the demise of the spillway?

The Blowout failure area has likely revealed a key piece of evidence of DWR performing "deep" filling of dangerous chasms under the main spillway in over a number of years in "void filling" repairs. The "evidence" is a large block of concrete that originated just above the "blowout" failure area in the spillway. Does this block reveal evidence of actions of serious repair attempts to a large scale underslab "void erosion" cavity to which the scale of its size would have been threatening a major failure of the spillway for years?

This sequence of photographs and images possibly reveals that DWR has been "filling" dangerous chasms of large voids instead of recognizing the serious nature of the imminent failure of the Main Spillway. This evidence, if found to be as it shows, would be severely damaging to DWR's position of not being aware of any failure risk to the Main Spillway.

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Evidence of 9+ foot thick Large Block of concrete at the bottom of Main Spillway? Large Void Chasms under Spillway? DSOD Inspectors told not to fix until damaged?

Fig 9. & clip from article - "Fig 9. Original "Blow-out" failure of Main Spillway. No "Large Blocks" present. The upper failure seam in the spillway is where seepage has been observed originating in the spillway during non-operating conditions (dry - See Fig 14). This seam is also where muliple repairs have been performed over the years as evidenced in images of "cuts" in the slab concrete for nearly the full length of this seam. After additional flows of 30,000 cfs to 33,000 cfs on Feb 8, 2017, and then 45,000 cfs on Feb 9, 2017, is when rapid upslope spillway backcutting collapsing failure progressed. This "rapid upslope" spillway collapse was most likely accelerated by the unstable large "void fill" blocks that had little to no anchor bar integrity remaining. The spillway flow was stopped on Feb 10, 2017 for an inspection (See Fig 8.). That is when the stack of "large slab blocks" were observed washed to the far side of the erosion channel, abutting the still intact broken upper part of the lower spillway. This is the critical evidence that the "large slab blocks" originated just above this "original blow-out failure" location & in the same large highly erodible weathered rock seam (Fig 8.)."

Fig 14. & clip from article - "Fig 14. Water seeping up through at the original blowout failure area. Of significance is the lack of drain flow at an outlet. This location identifies that the drains above the seepage area are not functioning. The drains that feed this outlet are in the exact area of the large void fill slab block area."