the hole in the emergency spillway may not be eroding as early as first thought. al jarreau, such a unique talent, has passed. his death comes two days after he was forced to retire from touring because of kplaugs. jarreau was just 76. on a lytle musical note, adele taking home five grammy awards including album of the year for 25, also winning song and record of the year for hir spashl hit hello. didn t lionel richie sing that? i always thought that was ripped off from lionel richie. were you obsessed with the word karamu, feest sta. that was more than five
that s where we are downstream on the feather river. if there was an issue with the spillway, they said it would have been a 30-foot wall of water that would have reached here four hours later and would have inundated much of this area. this area has over 100,000 people when you add them both together. we are told about 70% evacuated. when i was driving here i saw 5 miles of bumpe bumper to bumper traffic. they are trying to assess the situation. but we know the good news is they believe they stopped the erosion taking place on the emergency spillway which is not really a spillway, it s not cement. it s earthen. meaning it s just dirt.
of the dam in place. they will have three days if they can hold that water below the emergency spillway, they will have three days to repair. rains are coming thursday. so the water will probably reach the dam friday to saturday. there was a mandatory evacuation in many areas. you are talking about 80,000, 90,000 people who live in this area and a significant portion according to one sergeant. he says 70% may have gone the out of town. driving north from the sacramento airport, there were 25 miles of cars bumper to bumper, shores trailers, that sort of thing. can you see our live picture looks like an empty street? reporter: it looks like a ghost town. my first television job was here. right down that street not even 1/8 mile, you will see
uncontrolled floodwaters toward homes in the valley below. on the phone with me is adam housley who grew up in that area. he started his television career in that area. he knows the people, he knows the land, he knows what s going on, and he s been keeping up to date. moments agree there was a news conference from authority who went on to say that they had the situation as they hoped right now to be under control. but adam we understand through the department of human resources the person that spoke here said that at first morning light, they will have a chance to go out and get a closer look at that emergency spillway that we have been talking about that had erosion and that was the cause for the alarm. and one of the things that was going in the back of my mind is what are they potentially fearful of because this is something that was so serious they caused people to evacuate
people back in. with that i would like to invite the director bill quill up from the department of water resources to give us he s a subject matter expert in this and he can give us a better idea of the current status. thank you, sheriff. i m the acting director of the california department of water resources. tonight to confirm the adjustments to the flood control structure increase in the flow from 55,000 acre feet per second up to 100,000 acre feet allowed the department to withdraw more water faster so we could take the head off the top of the emergency spillway. the idea behind that strategy was to reduce the erosion. now the water is starting to