Homes threatend by weakend Dam in California

Was searching around and came upon this article i realise its not the most relaible source for some people and that the article was dated thursday passed, just thoiught that this news was worth sharing.

A Dam thats in Northern California has weakend considerably, during the recent downpour of rain. Two leves had already broken before and it seems this one could be at the risk of rupturing. This has caused the local deputies to start evacuating the area.

Deputies evacuated about 100 homes early Wednesday because of a storm-weakened earthen dam that appeared close to rupturing. Two levees had broken a day earlier in the Central Valley, and homes were evacuated near San Francisco because of a threat of landslides from the heavy rain.

The 12-foot earthen dam is at a golf course near Valley Springs in the Sierra foothills, surrounded by a semi-residential area of ranch homes and horse properties.

Up to 4 inches of rain had fallen in 24 hours in the area, weakening the dam, said Angus Barkhuff, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. If the dam were to fail, water would drain into a smaller pond that will likely overflow into the Calaveras River.

Source

Its a scarey thought actually dont u think, i know it states that it would trickle into a small pond but there appears to be the chance that there could be floods, has there been an update to this? does anyone know

I have a question if you don’t mind, why do people move into floodplains?
If no one moved into floodplains wouldn’t it save the US billions of dollars? Same story with volcanoes, why do people live at the foot of volcanoes? Why are we congregating in dangerous areas?

Originally posted by Marclar
I have a question if you don’t mind, why do people move into floodplains?
If no one moved into floodplains wouldn’t it save the US billions of dollars? Same story with volcanoes, why do people live at the foot of volcanoes? Why are we congregating in dangerous areas?

For the most part they don't - or didn't - know they were floodplains.
Especially so those moving in from another area.
Local knowledge doesn't always get passed along.

Nowadays it's a little better with all the legally required disclosures.

And sometimes a non-flood plain area can become flooded if trash in a river closes off waterflow under a bridge.
I found out about that one the hard way.
Four and a half feet of water and 18-24" of mud inside the house when the waters receded.

Aside from the cost of emergency equipment and workers responding, the US doesn't lose money during many of these disasters.
Home-owners and the like will either fall back on insurance or take advantage of gov't offered low interest loans.

Other places, like volcanic areas can be desirable places to live.
Most times folks are living near an inactive volcano so the danger - to my mind - is reasonable.
And volcano's usually give off some warning signs prior to eruption.

How about you?
Do you live on or near an earthquake fault line?
Some of my relatives in the midwest would not move to California due to it's earthquakes.
They're willing to suffer harsh winters and tornado's.

Funny part is, they're sitting near one of the biggest fault lines in the US....

I used to live in the California foothills. Big fire danger is all I can think of for that area. I’ll have to say California is awesome (the outdoors). But you need to pick the place you live very wisely.

I moved to a tornado area. (the plains) I love the storms. They get a little spooky sometimes but the spookier the better. I bought an LD250 lightning detector to add to the fun. It works pretty good.

About the dam, they should have built it better. This is the dam engineer’s fault. No pun intended. They need to build them to last and build them with flood problems in mind.

[edit on 4-8-2006 by Marclar]