Lake Oroville is a dam in northern California. A drought that has been going on for the past couple of years has dropped the water level. Bridges that used to be over water were over barely anything.

However, now tons of rain and snow has cleared up alot of California’s drought, and the lake has reached its capacity. 188,000 people have had to be evacuated due to the possibility of flooding. The emergency spillway is also eroding, and if the fail safe fails then there is the possibility of people being affected all the way in Sacramento, which is 75 miles away from the Oroville Dam.

Many people had thought that the rain and snow would be the good thing, considering that part of California hadn’t seen any type of precipitation in months. And it was for a little while, but now the water is just too much. Because of the major drought northern California has suffered through, the ground there is hard and cracked. Therefore, when the rain and snow came, the ground didn’t soak up the water. Now, it continues building up and even breaking through parts of the dam’s walls.

In an attempt to stop the possibility of major flooding, workers are breaking up rocks, putting them in bags, and putting them in the emergency spillway. The 188,000 people who evacuated Sunday night, however, are being advised that it’s still not safe to return. After the evacuations, downtown Oroville became a ghost town, and still is. Businesses are shut down for the time being. Scattered police officers man roadblocks. Stores sit dark and empty with sandbags stacked in front of their doors. Empty gas stations have yellow tape ringed around the pumps to indicate that there is no more fuel. All schools in the two closest counties have been closed, and will stay shut until Friday.