http://themilitant.com/2017/8108/810803.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 8 February 27, 2017
(front page)
Social disaster for working people in Calif.
dam evacuation
BY ERIC SIMPSON
AND JOEL BRITTON
CHICO, Calif. — The word spread rapidly in Oroville late Sunday
afternoon, Feb. 12. Some got a text alert on their phone, others heard
from neighbors. The spillway on the dam outside of town was threatening
to collapse. Get out.
“Everyone started crying — guys, girls,” 18-year-old Taco Bell worker
Jeffrey Chue told the Militant at the emergency center in the
fairgrounds here. He was just completing his shift.
“I just left and went home. My parents said, ‘Let’s go,’” Chue said.
“But it took 40 minutes to get to the highway, and my gas tank was on
empty. It was chaotic on the roads.”
The U.S. capitalist ruling families, for whom every judgment is based on
protecting their profits and rule, always blame social disasters like
the one unfolding here on natural causes.
Melisa Lattemore, 44, an Oroville housekeeper, heard there was a
mandatory evacuation so she and her companion piled a few things in a
friend’s truck and headed for the center. “This is a man-made disaster,”
she insisted.
Winter rains swelled the Oroville reservoir after years of drought. With
the water rising to dangerous levels, engineers let water out of a gated
concrete spillway, sending it coursing down a 770-foot drop into the
Feather River below. But the rushing water broke up some of the concrete
in the 180-foot-wide spillway, creating a 45-foot-deep hole in the
chute. Dam engineers reduced the flow of water to try to prevent further
erosion. Water in the reservoir rose to 101 percent of capacity.
On Feb. 11 the reservoir overflowed, flooding a parking lot and flowing
over the lip of an emergency spillway next to the gated chute.
The next morning engineers told the press and public that the dam was
sound and the situation was under control. But the emergency spillway,
built out of nothing but dirt, was eroding rapidly.
A few hours later, police agencies suddenly issued an order to evacuate
immediately. The order covered 180,000 people from towns downstream
along the bloated Feather River — from Oroville to Yuba City. They said
the spillway wall could collapse within the hour, creating a 30-foot
wall of water and washing away everything in its path.
At the Red Cross evacuation center here Socialist Workers Party members
from Oakland met some of the working people who had picked up and left
the danger zone on short notice. Farmworkers, housekeepers, retirees, an
unemployed secretary, others on disability, a Walmart worker — all
joined us to discuss the social crisis they were living through, its
effects and its causes.
People spoke about motels jacking up their prices; lost wages; lack of
communication and clear direction from emergency personnel; chaos and
panic; and traffic gridlock. Some asked why do we have to fill out so
many forms to get help — and what about undocumented workers working in
the fields?
And they talked about acts of working-class solidarity — people opening
their houses to strangers, friends, family and co-workers, bringing
donations and volunteering to help.
“While the rich get richer, the infrastructure is deteriorating,” Susan
Hildreth, 53, of Gridley said, sitting on her car with two dogs on a
leash. “The government didn’t set aside money to maintain the dam and
the engineers covered it up. I toured the dam 30 years ago for a class —
the control room was like Star Wars. But they said it was old then.”
The crisis exposed aspects of the broader social crisis produced by
capitalism’s contraction today. Workers and farmworkers in the area face
high rates of unemployment and poverty, and many have been driven into a
growing homeless population.
While the government did nothing but tell people to flee, members of
Habitat for Humanity and other volunteers organized to get vehicles to
try and help the homeless and others to safety.
Some were left to walk from Yuba City to the fairgrounds in Colusa, a
12-hour trip on foot. Very few shelters allowed evacuees to bring their
pets.
Authorities knew of problems
Construction began on the Oroville Dam in 1961. It is the tallest dam in
the country and has created the second largest reservoir in California.
In 2005, Friends of the River and other environmental groups proposed
the state upgrade the emergency spillway to prevent the kind of
catastrophic failure unfolding today. The proposal was rejected.
When asked why the proposal was refused, Bill Croyle, acting director of
the California Department of Water Resources, told the press Feb. 13
that use of the spillway — and the resulting washing away of the soil —
was a “new, never-happened-before event.”
The apologists for the rulers have often used the same excuse — this was
an unpredictable once-in-a-lifetime event — when preventable disasters
strike, from hurricanes Katrina and Sandy to the round of storms that
devastated parts of the South in January.
Engineers have reduced the water level in the reservoir — for now — by
sending 100,000 cubic feet of water per second down the damaged
spillway, further eroding the hillside. More storms are expected later
this week and engineers are scurrying to put a temporary fix in place.
“We live in a world of risk,” Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown said at a news
conference the day after the evacuation order, expressing the contempt
the rulers have for the safety of working people. “Stuff happens, and we
respond.”
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