California Dept. of Water Resources investigators are trying to discover why a steel bulkhead failed on July 22 during routine hydraulic tests at Oroville Dam. Five workers were injured when a 6-ft-tall, 10-ft-wide nonstructural steel wall in a diversion tunnel at the dam’s powerplant collapsed during a routine annual hydraulic-valves test.
The incident shut the plant for about two hours until the bulkhead was repaired, according to Carl Torgerson, DWR chief of operations and maintenance.