Oroville, California.A
massive crevasse that formed in a spillway at Northern California's
Oroville Dam has spurred mass evacuations, with nearby residents fleeing
the worst-case specter of a three-story wall of water rushing
downstream.
In all, about
188,000 people, mostly in Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties, evacuated
from the area, some being given only minutes to gather their things.
"Everyone
was running around; it was pure chaos," Oroville resident Maggie Cabral
told CNN affiliate KFSN on Sunday. "All of the streets were immediately
packed with cars, people in my neighborhood grabbing what they could
and running out the door and leaving. I mean, even here in Chico,
there's just traffic everywhere."
The area had long been in drought until
this year when heavy rain and snow bombarded the state. In Oroville, the
average annual rainfall is about 31 inches, but since October, the
Feather River, which begins at Lake Oroville, had already seen 25 inches
of rain as of Saturday, according to the California Department of Water
Resources.
The lake also gets water from the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range, which is experiencing one of its wettest seasons.
This
week's weather report supplied a sliver of good news, as no rain is
predicted until Wednesday. Also, efforts to lower the water level on
Lake Oroville appeared successful, a DWR official said.
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