That viral video of the California dam nearly failing last spring was missing the real story
I saw that footage from the Oroville Dam spillway crisis all over my feed back in February, but nobody mentioned the concrete debris that had been piling up there for weeks before the crack got huge. My cousin works maintenance for the state water project, and he told me inspectors had flagged small spalling as early as January, but the repair crew was told to wait until after the rainy season. Then came that big February storm, and the whole thing started crumbling fast. They ended up dumping 1,200 truckloads of rocks into the emergency spillway to stop it from washing out the highway below. The news showed the dramatic drone shots, sure, but they skipped the part where the county had no backup plan for evacuating 188,000 people if that dam gave way. Has anyone else looked into the maintenance reports that came out six months before it happened?