188,000 Fled. The Warning Came in 2005 | Oroville Dam Crisis, 2017

At 4:21 p.m. on February 12, 2017, the Butte County Sheriff's Office ordered the low parts of Oroville — and everything downstream — to evacuate. About 188,000 people were told to leave. Oroville Dam, the tallest in America, never broke. Something smaller did: the concrete spillway beside it had torn open five days earlier, and the hillside below the emergency spillway was washing away toward its lip. The story everyone heard was a record storm. The record says something else. In 1997 more water poured into Lake Oroville and the dam came through without a crisis. In 2017, less water did far more damage — and the federal disaster agency later refused $306 million, judging that part of the spillway had been damaged before the storms. This documentary follows the flaw back to the 1960s: a slab thinner than the drawings, drain pipes that rose into the concrete, weathered rock described for decades as "good quality," and straight thin cracks that every inspection saw and patched. Then the warning in writing: in October 2005, three groups asked federal regulators to armor the emergency spillway instead of leaving a bare hillside. The answer was no. Eleven years and four months later, the water went exactly where they had pointed. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 4:21 p.m., February 12, 2017 1:20 Built to be admired 2:13 Two ways out for a lake 2:37 The emergency spillway: a lip over bare ground 3:07 Who lives downstream 3:53 The record-storm story 4:44 1997 vs 2017: less water, more damage 5:28 The money: what FEMA refused 6:50 Fifteen inches on paper 8:20 Drains inside the slab 9:39 A crack straight as a pencil line 10:35 Rock that behaved like soil 11:16 Who built it 12:01 The hillside next door 13:09 Fifty years of looking 14:13 The finding at the center of the report 14:57 Looking for a cover-up 15:37 "Overconfident and complacent" 16:32 Someone knocked in writing 17:15 October 17, 2005: the motion 18:20 July 27, 2006: the memo 19:01 "A slow-moving crisis" 19:41 Seen. Patched. Passed. 20:15 February 7, 2017 20:52 The hole 21:47 Every gallon widens the crack 22:33 No buffer for an error 23:25 Water over the lip 24:06 An Olympic pool every seven seconds 24:52 "Does the sheriff know about this?" 25:18 4:21 p.m.: not a drill 26:28 More water, not less 27:11 The bill 28:01 Who pays 28:49 Claims and lawsuits 29:39 Kent Lang's walnut trees 30:19 The forensic team 31:06 No single root cause 31:55 "Inevitable, and yet unexpected" 32:17 The same X-ray for fifty years 33:07 A photo from orbit 33:29 What they were trying to find Do you live below a dam? Do you know what its last inspection was actually looking for? Tell us in the comments — and which dam we should investigate next. They Were Warned — the stories behind the world's most devastating engineering failures. Subscribe for a new investigation every week. #Oroville #OrovilleDam #DamDisaster