Get out your pans: Oroville Dam erosion may yield a tiny gold rush. The picture below is from March 2017 after the reservoir level was lowered so the emergency runoff could be closed off, the huge sluice of earth revealed new gold discoveries
Over the weekend (mid February 2017) the damaged water release spillway at the Oroville Dam near Sacramento, CA, got much worse as the water that feeds the dammed reservoir overwhelmed the spillway and began to flow over the Emergency Spillway which could undercut the complete dam. A massive crevasse that formed in primary spillway at the dam has spurred mass evacuations, with nearby residents fleeing the worst-case specter of a three-story wall of water rushing downstream.
In all, about 188,000 people, mostly in Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties, evacuated from the area, some being given only minutes to gather their things.
Several short videos here depicting the scene earlier today.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/us/california-oroville-dam-spillway-failure/
Past, Present, Future 