Patterico's Pontifications

2/12/2017

California Spillway Failure Feared in Oroville, Could Cause Massive Flooding

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:03 pm



The L.A. Times reports:

Residents of Oroville and nearby towns were ordered to immediately evacuate on Sunday afternoon after a hole was discovered at the emergency spillway for the Oroville Dam.

Officials said late Sunday they will attempt to plug the hole using sandbags and rocks but stressed the situation remains dangerous and urged thousands of residents downstream to evacuate to higher ground.

The National Weather Service said the auxiliary spillway at the Oroville Dam was expected to fail about 5:45 p.m., which could send an “uncontrolled release of flood waters from Lake Oroville.”

Just yesterday the public was told there was no danger. Now there are mandatory evacuations underway, traffic snarls, and a lot of confusion. Some reports state that the dam is danger of failing, while other reports (which appear to be more accurate) say that the emergency spillway is in danger, not the dam itself.

If the dam itself were to break, it would be catastrophic. The Sacramento Bee reports: Marysville, Yuba County evacuated as Oroville spillway collapse feared. Under a section titled Worst Case Scenario the paper says:

There is no map showing exactly what will happen if the emergency spillway collapses tonight. Officials only have a map showing a failure of the dam. That worst case scenario is useful in that it shows where water goes and how fast it gets there.

Water would get to the town of Oroville within an hour.

If Oroville Dam were to suffer a massive breach, water would get to the town of Oroville within an hour, according to GIS maps maintained by CalFire.

Within two hours, the small town of Briggs would be affected. In three hours, Gridley would be hit. Water would reach Live Oak in five hours..

It would take eight to 12 hours for the water to get to Marysville and Yuba City.

If the dam completely failed, flood depths could reach more than 100 feet in Oroville and up to 10 feet in Yuba City.

There’s some dramatic video here, but the statement in the tweet that the dam is expected to fail appears to be wrong:

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]

Andrew Sullivan Would Like You To Take Him Seriously When Discussing Mental Health

Filed under: General — Dana @ 1:32 pm



[guest post by Dana]

To my mind, any talk about the “objective truth” is particularly rich when coming from a man who obsessively pushed a conspiracy theory involving Sarah Palin’s uterus and made Trig Trutherism a thing.

As noted:

Sullivan’s disgusting, ends-justify-the-means obsession with the personal family life of Sarah Palin breached every ethical and journalistic boundary known to the cosmos. Between airing Palin’s hacked private emails and making a cottage industry out of challenging the maternity of her son, Trig, sometimes the word “irony” or “hypocrisy” is not descriptive enough.

Certainly, let’s take Dr. Sullivan’s discussions about mental health with the seriousness it deserves.

(Pre-emptive strike: This post is only a comment about Sullivan’s own mental health.)

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back)

–Dana

Yet Another Display Of Intolerance By The Usual Suspects: Gay Man Comes Out As A Conservative, Subsequently Rejected By His Community

Filed under: General — Dana @ 10:34 am



[guest post by Dana]

Bigotry toward those who think differently has always been the designer label worn by those on the left side of the aisle. Whether in the gay community, academia, Hollywood or in some other bastion of liberalism, it remains the litmus-test of acceptance and acceptability.

Chadwicke Moore is almost a cliche: He is a 30-year old gay journalist living in hip Williamsburg, where the political stripe of the masses is unquestionably liberal.

Yet recently, Moore personally experienced just how ugly and intolerant the left can be when someone dares to break rank from the lockstep beliefs of the community. After his intentionally neutral story about Milo Yiannopoulos appeared in a gay magazine, Moore was the target of a backlash from that community, including being rejected by long-time close friends who felt betrayed and no longer wanted anything to do with him. Perhaps not unlike when they themselves came out to their own families about being gay… But the shunning of Moore, the complete rejection of him is, of course, perfectly acceptable, and frankly, expected. Because, as we’ve been instructed, ad nauseum, this particular brand of intolerance is righteous and a good thing. Sadly, Moore says that in the same way that coming out to his family when he was a 15-year old was the hardest thing he had ever done, so too is coming out as a conservative in New York:

After the story posted online in the early hours of October 21, I woke up to more than 100 Twitter notifications on my iPhone. Trolls were calling me a Nazi, death threats rolled in and a joke photo that I posed for in a burka served as “proof” that I am an Islamophobe.

I’m not.

Most disconcertingly, it wasn’t just strangers voicing radical discontent. Personal friends of mine — men in their 60s who had been my longtime mentors — were coming at me. They wrote on Facebook that the story was “irresponsible” and “dangerous.” A dozen or so people unfriended me. A petition was circulated online, condemning the magazine and my article. All I had done was write a balanced story on an outspoken Trump supporter for a liberal, gay magazine, and now I was being attacked. I felt alienated and frightened.

I hope New Yorkers can be as accepting of my new status as a conservative man as they’ve been about my sexual orientation.
I lay low for a week or so. Finally, I decided to go out to my local gay bar in Williamsburg, where I’ve been a regular for 11 years. I ordered a drink but nothing felt the same; half the place — people with whom I’d shared many laughs — seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder. Upon seeing me, a friend who normally greets me with a hug and kiss pivoted and turned away.

Frostiness spread far beyond the bar, too. My best friend, with whom I typically hung out multiple times per week, was suddenly perpetually unavailable. Finally, on Christmas Eve, he sent me a long text, calling me a monster, asking where my heart and soul went, and saying that all our other friends are laughing at me.

I realized that, for the first time in my adult life, I was outside of the liberal bubble and looking in. What I saw was ugly, lock step, incurious and mean-spirited.

God, if Moore becomes politically active, let’s hope for his sake that he doesn’t own a hotel…

Read the whole thing.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back)

–Dana


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