Personal Blog

Month: February 2017

‘Patch and Pray’ Crack Repairs on Oroville Dam – “They put cement into the cracks and troweled it over,” a Berkeley civil engineer said. “I call it ‘patch and pray”

Why we’re getting jacked:

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From: nbcbayarea.com

‘Patch and Pray’ Crack Repairs on Oroville Dam Emergency Spillway: UC Berkeley Civil Engineer

“They put cement into the cracks and troweled it over,” a Berkeley civil engineer said. “I call it ‘patch and pray”’

Six months before rushing water ripped a huge hole in a channel that drains a Northern California reservoir, state inspectors said the concrete spillway was sound. As officials puzzle through how to repair Oroville Dam spillway, federal regulators have ordered the state to figure out what went wrong.

Earlier inspection reports offer potential clues, including cracks on the spillway surface that if not properly repaired could let water tear through the concrete. In recent years, construction crews patched cracks — including in the area where water burrowed a huge pit last week. …

Last August, a team of inspectors did not check the channel on foot but instead from afar, also concluding that everything looked fine. …

Robert Bea, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at University of California, Berkeley, said it’s “obvious those repairs didn’t work.”

“We don’t have details on the repairs, but they put cement into the cracks and troweled it over,” Bea said. “I call it ‘patch and pray.”’

On Monday, federal regulators told the department it must enlist a group of independent consultants both to assess what went wrong and to recommend long-term fixes.

Documents and interviews show that crews were patching cracks in 2009 and 2013. …

“Any type of evidence that might have been there is gone,” Eric Holland of the water resources department’s dam safety division said. “Everything has been washed away.”

Entire Article

Related:

Records Show Gov’t Knew of Dangers of Oroville Dam for YEARS — Did Nothing to Fix It!

(video) ‘Distant Shores’ Sailing Series: How They Do It — One of my favorite shows!!!

I’ve had the wonderful privilege of being able to see about half of the 130 episodes in high def on TV. It’s a great way to see the world and experience the sailing life; though, I’ve travelled much of the world in real life too.

They show part of the Syria episode here. They had a blast there, finding the people to be very friendly, and the country was very modern, and not a religious state — which many Americans don’t know.

Seeing what the Mossad and CIA have done to Syria since then, by supporting the terrorists to topple Assad, has been very sad for me, knowing they didn’t do anything to US, nor did Assad gas his own people, which was a Mossad/CIA manufactured lie.

And this created much of the refugee crisis too.

This is a great series that is especially nice to watch during our dull, colorless, long winters in Alaska.

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How to make a Million Dollar Sailing Video!

Records Show Gov’t Knew of Dangers of Oroville Dam for YEARS — Did Nothing to Fix It!

I wonder how many other warnings have gone unheeded, regarding issues of all kinds.

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From: steemit.com

Records Show Govt Knew of Dangers of Oroville Dam for YEARS — Did Nothing to Fix It

Nearly 200,000 people had to be evacuated from the floodplain beneath Oroville Dam, when an earthen emergency spillway threatened to disintegrate under the sheer volume of floodwater putting pressure on the structure — the exact scenario federal and state officials were cautioned about over a decade ago.

But they didn’t heed the warning.

“Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside,” reports the Mercury News.

That motion was filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when the groups found Oroville Dam — the tallest in the United States and completed in 1968 — did not meet modern safety standards. Heavy rains and flooding, they said, would overwhelm the primary concrete spillway and force waters over the emergency spillway — but the volume could erode the earthen chute and inundate communities nearby.

Worse, such an extreme event could cause failure, or “loss of crest control.”

…bowing to budgetary and financial concerns — didn’t listen.

“FERC rejected that request….

“A filing on May 26, 2006, by Thomas Berliner, an attorney for the State Water Contractors, and Douglas Adamson, an attorney for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, discounted the risk. It urged FERC to reject the request to require that the emergency spillway be armored, a job that would have cost tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.”

Officials blew off concerns as hyperbolic since the earthen spillway had been designed to accommodate 350,000 cubic feet per second, and — in extreme circumstances — could safely sustain heavy damage without being completely destroyed. …

“The emergency spillway meets FERC’s engineering guidelines for an emergency spillway. The guidelines specify that during a rare flood event, it is acceptable for the emergency spillway to sustain significant damage.” …

Those who warned of the dangers in 2005 saw their fears nearly come to fruition.

“We said ‘are you really sure that running all this water over the emergency spillway won’t cause the spillway to fail?’” Ron Stork of Sacremento’s Friends of the River told the Mercury News. “They tried to be as evasive as possible. It would have cost money to build a proper concrete spillway.

“I’m feeling bad that we were unable to persuade DWR and FERC and the Army Corps to have a safer dam.”

Eric See, California Department of Water Resources spokesman, denied reports there had been any lapse in safety at Oroville Dam, despite reports of the over-decade-old warning to FERC.

Entire Article

Why is Modern Art so Bad? — For two millennia, great artists set the standard for beauty. Now those standards are gone. Modern art is a competition between the ugly and the twisted; the most shocking wins. What happened? How did the beautiful come to be reviled and bad taste come to be celebrated? • Renowned artist Robert Florczak explains the history and the mystery behind this change and how it can be stopped and even reversed • “Let’s celebrate what we know is good, and ignore what we know is not!”

Why is Modern Art so Bad?

BUSTED BY CAMERA: CNN Caught Handing Out Questions at Cruz-Sanders Debate

REPORT: CNN CAUGHT HANDING OUT QUESTIONS AT CRUZ-SANDERS DEBATE

Report: CNN Caught Handing Out Questions at Cruz-Sanders Debate

CNN was caught handing out an apparently edited question to a member of the audience “clarifying” what to ask Ted Cruz during the debate Tuesday night with Bernie Sanders about the future of Obamacare. 

The question, read by Carol Hardaway is as follows:

“I have multiple sclerosis but could not afford insurance – without the treatment or medications I need, I had problems with walking, with my speech, and my vision. When the affordable care act was passed I moved from our home state of Texas because they refused to expand Medicaid to Maryland and within 2 weeks I started receiving treatments through Medicaid and am now well enough to work as a substitute teacher.”

“Senator Cruz, can you promise me that you and the Republican leaders in congress will have – actually have a replacement plan in place for people like me who depend on their Medicaid? In other words, I like my coverage, can I keep it?”

The email is from a Gmail account, with the subject line “Your Question,” as the picture shows.

This isn’t the first time CNN has been caught “managing” questions from the audience.

Just last October, WikiLeaks revealed that CNN commentator and former chair of the DNC Donna Brazile funneled questions to Hillary Clinton ahead of a major Democratic primary debate. She was fired as DNC chair and let go as commentator shortly after the revelations came to light.

A month later, WikiLeaks again revealed that CNN was caught asking the DNC to prepare questions for Wolf Blitzer’s interview with then-candidate Donald Trump…

Entire Article

LOVE in the Midst of Chaos – WORD of Encouragement: Romans 13:8-10

Beautiful!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqKn5FDGE-w

LOVE in the Midst of Chaos – WORD of Encouragement: Romans 13:8-10

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