five days. here it is. there are major reservoirs to the west of houston, built when houston had 250,000 people. here they are right here. the addicks reservoir holding back billions of gallons of water. back here, barker is holding back a lot of water. eventually, the water spills out over the spillway control and into the buffalo bayou. we have been controlling this spill for days now, pushing the water out controlled. but that has all failed. there s not enough water coming out and the reservoir has filled up. it has filled up and flooded all the neighborhoods on the we ll be right back here that have been built since 1930s when this reservoir was built. get rid of this real quick and i will show you what else we want to talk about. here is the reservoir, an earthen dam built on dirt, big piles of dirt.
above sea level here. on the north side we have 108 feet, ending right there. that s where the water now, at 108.3 is spilling over and into areas that have never seen flooding before because this barrier, this dam, this earthen dam has always been there. now, it s not failing. this is just how high it s ever supposed to get. even at this point in time, all of these neighborhoods are all full of water. now, the water is finally spilling over here, going to be flooding different spots, different places and back into the buffalo bayou, uncontrolably, so rosa florez may see more water coming up in downtown houston because of this water has to go right through the city. that is certainly not good news for people there. chad myers thank you for breaking it down for us. i want to go west of downtown houston. the river there is rising.
stage. lot of emergency calls to answer this morning, and just this plea for drivers to stay home and off the roads f at all possible. back to you. thanks to sarah dollaf live in south carolina. meteorologist bill karins is joining us live from the weather center with the latest on the flooding. bill, give us a sense of what s going on with the storm. what can we expect? incredible images on social media right now what s going on in south carolina. this one, nicole hawkins gave me permission to use this image. this isn t far from where sarah was located a dam collapse inside columbia east side of downtown, this is simmis lake on ft. jackson, earthen dam, maybe reinforced with a little bit of concrete, it has a huge hole in the middle. that went into wildcat creek and looks like the dam is, the lake is pretty much gone, everything emptied out down into the creek. you can only imagine what that floodwater was like as it rushed down almost through downtown areas of south carolina. h
700-acre lake you have backhoes going there trying to cut a slit into that area to the west of this lake. the hope is to release some water gradually perhaps beginning as early as tomorrow afternoon. both methods trying to reduce the pressure on this earthen dam. it s been budging and they are trying to prevent a complete collapse. vantage point of this because it kept on raining. now we can fully see where the problem is what kind of effects are their efforts having? well, right now the water has receded about 2 and a half feet. most engineers say it s not really because of what they have done but because of mother nature. waiting on the lord, first of all, to slow this rain down. that has been done. the rain is not coming. we don t have that much water flow coming down that way. the people who live around this dam are hoping their won t be any more rain for a while. but people here fully aware of the fact that hurricane season has at least another solid