Drainage Basin Aerials 3/20

[SBitz]

Here are some Tuesday afternoon aerial "before" views of a few drainage basins just as the light rain was starting. They show how much work has been done to clear debris, and how crews were still working right up to the last minute.

[SBitz]

First off, at the base of the mountain atop the creek that drains to Padaro area.

Looks like this crew had already stopped most work as water had already started flowing.

[SBitz]

Next, the creek at the Northeast end of Carp, where the prior debris flow had apparently already done some damage.

[SBitz]

My main interest in the Carp area as we flew past, was the main debris basin where there was still major work going on.

Down in the pit two digging machines were still working, with another pair on top perhaps getting ready to move out of the way in case debris comes over the top.

I wonder if that tangle just above the drain channel inlet is the remains of steel girders from a bridge that was taken out by the prior debris flow. In this next pic you can get a better look of that and the three square concrete water towers of different heights with massive steel filter bars at their tops in the right side of the pit.

[SBitz]

The other place we saw signs of major work was in the Carp Salt Marsh inlet channel at the East end.

At the right side of the pic is a dredge barge in the side channel, and a digger on the left bank of the main channel that joins there. In other pix you can see that they've dredged the whole channel to the outlet in preparation for letting a lot of water through. Post a request here if you'd like me to add a few more pix from the flight. Now I'm going to send some (and an interesting near shore oil slick) to Edhat...

[Shasta Guy]

Thanks for the images.  One thing the photos show is the massive scale of the debris basins because if you looks closely you'll see a tiny digger in it.   We'll see what happens for the next 36 hrs.