Oroville >> Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea has described the night he ordered the evacuation of thousands of people downstream of the Oroville Dam many times before, but as he says, there are always new perspectives when it comes to the crisis.

An article by the Associated Press published Thursday revealed new details about what was said in the room on Feb. 12 when the evacuation order was made, and the hours before and after it. Some of the information in the article was news to Honea himself when he read the article, but he confirmed most of what the notes retrieved through a Freedom of Information Act request by the AP insinuate.

“It was an extraordinarily tense and stressful period,” the sheriff said. “There was a lot of uncertainty. It was a dynamic, rapidly developing situation.”

Here are Honea’s comments on specific points in the AP article:

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At the end of the article, a dam manager, referred to as Whitlock — Honea identifies him as Pat Whitlock — says the sheriff was worried the problem would not have been caught if a geologist didn’t identify the erosion and possibility of undercutting in the picture.

“That’s consistent with what happened. It was getting later in the afternoon on the 12th and up to that point, the information I was receiving was that although it wasn’t ideal, the water was going over the emergency spillway, things seemed to be going as well as could be expected.

“But then Pat Whitlock was looking at this photo of the emergency spillway and there was a group of people standing behind him. I believe that quote references one of those geologists who brought the picture. I heard him say, ‘Does the sheriff know about this?’ and when I inquired further, that’s when I started learning about this rapidly developing erosion that was headcutting or moving back toward the dam.”

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The picture didn’t show him all he needed to know to make a decision. In his words, he’s “not a hydrologist.”

“I could tell Pat Whitlock was concerned. I could tell the people that had brought the picture to his attention were very concerned, but they had to explain to me what it meant. I was actually ready to go home for the evening. That’s when I walked up to say goodbye to everybody, saw them looking at the picture.

“When they told me the picture was showing erosion, I said, ‘OK, what does that mean? They said, ‘We need to talk more about it.’ They were probably gone 10 or 15 minutes. When they came back in, I could tell there was a high degree of concern among the group. By that time, (then-acting director of DWR) Bill Croyle had joined.

“It was then, I began to interrogate the group, if you will, just so I could really hone in on the critical pieces of information needed to make a decision. It seemed that time was of the essence. I’ve talked about it a lot — at that point, the realization struck me that there could be significant loss of life if we didn’t act.

“I said to the group, essentially, it sounds to me like we need to evacuate. There were some side conversations in the room, probably 40 or 50 people in the conference room, and at that point, in a rather loud and assertive tone, I said, ‘Everybody listen to me,’ and kind of recounted the facts that had been presented to illustrate what the threat was and checked back with the subject matter experts and asked, ‘Do I understand this correctly?’ They said yes.

“I said, ‘It sounds to me we need to order an evacuation. If anyone disagrees with that or has a better alternative I need to know now,’ and the room was silent, everybody was looking at me. I did a visual check in with other incident commanders. I kind of got that confirmation I was doing the right thing.

“It was such an incredibly tense and frightening situation. Your perception of time sometimes is a little distorted or off, but I would say, probably within 20 to 30 minutes, maybe even less, from hearing about the problem, was when order was made, based upon my perception.”

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After he ordered the evacuation of the downstream areas of Butte County, the Yuba and Sutter county sheriffs followed suit. An estimated total of 180,000 people were told to flee their homes that Sunday night. A lump formed in the sheriff’s throat as he asked his staff to go into the areas he ordered community members to leave, for their safety.

“It hit me — I just ordered the evacuation of thousands of people because I was afraid they were going to die, and in the same breath, ordered all of my staff to come in. I thought if we make it through this, I might not have a staff tomorrow.”

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Notes from meetings that night retrieved by AP revealed that DWR could not see what was going on with the emergency spillway, as no cameras or lights were out there. That night, it was a scramble to gather drones and helicopters to get eyes on the damage as water careened down the hillside. It was hours before Honea knew the impact, but he was busy trying to organize traffic, which was at nearly a standstill for hours on the freeways, and take media calls.

“There was so much chaos going on. I wasn’t sitting around dwelling on it. There were so many things to be dealt with.

“Some hours later that night, I got word water had gone down far enough it was no longer going over the emergency spillway and I was speaking to Croyle. I said, ‘Can I lift the evacuation?’ The response was ‘not yet because we don’t know how deep the erosion is, if it has undercut or eroded under the emergency spillway.’

“Croyle asked how much weight our helicopter could lift. He wanted to use it that night to start lifting bags of rock to put into the hole. Of course, I said, ‘Whatever you need.’

“Some DWR employees went into the canyon that night. It’s a piece I will never forget — in a briefing probably 1, 2, 3 in the morning, I’m getting a report from the geologists from DWR and Army Corps of Engineers who had scrambled into the canyon the moment the water stopped going over there. They didn’t know what they were getting into. That’s a pretty heroic thing.

“One turned to me and he said, ‘The rock under (the emergency spillway) is not that good. Sheriff, we have to make sure water never goes over that emergency spillway again,’ and that’s what resonated with me.

“At that point, I knew we’d done the right thing, given what we were hearing. I never ever want to do that again, but I don’t regret making that decision.”

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The article also cited a call with Gov. Jerry Brown’s office, in which an unidentified official said, “Tell everyone to come back,” according to the notes obtained by the AP. The sheriff said he didn’t know who that person was and he never heard anyone voice disapproval of his decision to make the evacuation order, downgrade it or rescind when he did.

“That was the first I ever heard of that. Everybody I talked to was fully on board with the evacuation and keeping it in effect until we had clarity.

“It’s kind of interesting from my standpoint because you live through an event like this and you have your own view of it — I’m still getting my arms wrapped around all the aspects — and I’m constantly hearing new stories and new perceptions.

“The credit goes to so many people: my staff, first responders, our community. I’ve heard hundreds of stories of acts of compassion, heroism on part of everyday people. I want them to be prepared, pay attention to what’s going on. (After the Oroville Dam) evacuations, the Wall Fire then the Ponderosa Fire, I feel like they’ve really gotten an understanding that we’re trying to keep people safe. When it’s time to evacuate, do it.

“Watching news coverage on (Hurricane) Harvey and seeing devastation, I couldn’t help to be thankful we were spared that. It could have looked like that, perhaps on a smaller scale. When I saw that, it brought me back to thankfulness this community did not have to endure that. The silver lining out of all of this is it gave our community an opportunity to come together and see that in a crisis we can rise to the occasion.”

Reach reporter Risa Johnson at 896-7763.