and send a 30-foot wall of water into communities. when they sent out that evacuation order yesterday, they at that point thought that that could fail within one hour and that was the rush on the evacuation for all of those people. now, again, looking at the overall structure, you see the dam is on the right side. it s labeled oroville dam. that part of the dam is not in danger. that s good. but it s not necessarily reassuring at this point when they keep sending huge amounts of water at high speed down the main spillway even though it has a giant spillway which could get billinger and spread. if it spreads up back the mountain to the gates, that could be catastrophic. meanwhile, the hole in the emergency spillway, if they need to put more water down there, that could grow and undermine the concrete lip and that could be catastrophic. i mean, right now officials say they have managed to pump out enough water to lower the level of the lake by a few feet and the water s no longer coming
at 901 feet. as of 11:00 a.m. saturday morning, the water was 6 inches over that limit and started to pour over the emergency spillway. by 3:00 a.m. sunday, the reservoir surface crested at over nine hundred two feet. six hours later, lake levels were dropping and are continuing to drop tonight. continued to fall. that s also an important point in our objective is to lower the lake level by 50 feet in order to prepare for future inflow of water. more than 180,000 people were ordered to evacuate. sparking traffic jams and concern among residents. multiple accidents with injuries on the freeway coming over from oroville. we were pulling a trailer and it took almost two hours. everyone is panicking. everybody has got to remember we are okay at the moment. try to keep calm. evacuees and engineers are focused on the weather, as more rain is the focused for later
night, steve manchin was sworn in. senate also approved and evacuation order issued near california oroville dam. helicopters are being used to drop giant rock filled bags into the emergency spillway, a failure could send a 30-foot wall of water gushing toward the river, destroying homes in its path. that s a look at news, back now to red eye. tom: pakistan has officially broken up with valentine s day. on monday, a hyatt court
i have been stuck in this spot for 20 minutes, and i m not going nowhere. reporter: the problem all stemming from the oroville dam in northern california, now at record levels and in danger of spilling over after a series of storms. at 770 feet high, the dam is america s tallest. it releases water from lake oroville through a spillway. the problem started last tuesday when a massive hole developed in in the spillway s concrete base, forcing it to allow water over this wall into the adjacent emergency spillway. here are the dramatic images of the water going over the wall for the first time in 1968 leading to that dangerous erosi erosion. right behind me, these are the giant bags they are filling up with rocks to drop into the hole, and they are 4 feet tall. with that giant hole to take the
downstream. we have water over the emergency spillway. it was beginning to erode the ground. when you start to erode the ground, dirt and everything rolls and undermines itself. if we don t take care of that and mitigate properly, we are looking at approximately a 30-foot wall of water. officials are waiting for first light this morning to better assess the situation and decide if it is safe to return for residents. and much of new england is buried under snow and ice. up to 2 feet or more in places. let s get to meteorologist pedram javaheri. after a weekend of a foot in the northeast, conditions will improve. you see wintry weather in eastern corner of maine with over 300,000 people under a blizzard warning. 20 million people in the winter weather alerts in place. this system by 5:00 p.m., it is