Several Northern California towns dodged a fatal bullet Sunday night when a weakened auxiliary spillway at Oroville Dam – the nation’s highest – didn’t collapse.
Authorities had issued evacuation orders for nearly 200,000 people living near the Feather River when it appeared the spillway was in imminent danger of giving way.
The situation remains dicey as operators of the half-century-old, state-owned dam send as much water as possible down the earth-fill dam’s main spillway, which itself had been damaged by erosion, and try to lower Lake Oroville’s level to at least 50 feet below the auxiliary spillway’s lip.
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