More than 180,000 people have been asked to evacuate the area downstream of the Oroville Dam in California, after officials warned of an "imminent failure" as a result of a hole in the crumbling structure.
At 770 feet, Oroville is the tallest dam in the United States. Residents of eight cities in the dam's vicinity were told to evacuate shortly before 5 PM local time on Sunday.
Lake Oroville was inundated by unusual amounts of rainfall as a result of three atmospheric river storms—a type of storm associated with major flooding events—in the area during January and February. Once Lake Oroville reached capacity, officials from California's Department of Water Resources began utilizing the dam's spillway—a structure that provides the controlled release of water.
Cracks began to appear around the spillway last week, according to the declaration of emergency from Gov. Jerry Brown's office. On Saturday, officials began relying on the backup auxiliary spillway, which had never been used since the dam's construction in 1968, but soon determined that that structure was also at risk of failing.
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