After six years of devastating drought, some of us (foolishly?) assumed the fact that California was again receiving rain was a good thing, a powerful sign that the cabal was losing the weather wars. Then the rains came again, and again. Here are two perspectives on this unfolding drought-to-deluge drama that is scouring Mother Earth and currently displacing (into highway gridlock) upwards of 200,000 people and their animals for an unknown length of time.
Oroville dam emergency demonstrates how incompetent bureaucrats are marching California into collapse at every level
and
Was the Oroville Spillway engineered to collapse at an appointed time?
No matter what we consider the cause or causes, let us imagine ourselves there, on the ground, in our cramped car with our loved ones, animals, and hopefully, a full tank of gas, a bit of food, stashed money, stuck in “traffic” (i.e., other cars with equally scared people and their animals and precious stuff) below this dam, on the floodplain. How would we feel? And why is it easier to relate to (temporary) refugees in the U.S. than to (likely permanent) refugees streaming from the devastation of U.S. caused wars in the Mideast to Europe and elsewhere?
The LA Times has an unusually full compendium of stories relating to the latest U.S. disaster. This one holds the kind of significance that reminds me of impacts on Earth and earthlings during the BP spill in the Gulf, Hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans and Sandy in New York City. And then, of course, there’s the ongoing catastrophe at Fukushima. What’s next? And how to prepare? Not just for physical survival, but especially for active stewardship centered in spiritual equanimity, no matter what? Joanna Macy’s advice feels more and more essential as we turn to face, headlong and largely blind, the accelerating turbulence and associated breakdowns of structures and processes — both internal, in our own psyches, and external — that we took for granted, politically, culturally, geophysically.
Joanna Macy, on how to prepare internally for whatever comes next
2 thoughts on “California Dam Calamity: Incompetence? or By Design. (And so what? Does “the cause” or “causes” matter? If not, what DOES matter?)”
Re: Oroville Dam…of particular note is the fact that erosion began at the top of the spillway when peak flows were at 12,600 cubic feet per second compared to the design capacity of 460,000 cubic feet per second (LA Times) and disconnects of this type add legitimacy to many of the questions presently being posed regarding the incident.
Exactly! Extremely weird.