SALEM, Ore. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that a large earthquake — which is expected to occur again in the Pacific Northwest sooner or later — could cause the spillway gates of a dam in Oregon to buckle, resulting “in a potentially catastrophic flood.” The Corps announced late Monday it will try to minimize the danger by reducing the maximum height of the lake by five feet starting in April.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including those in the state capital, live downstream from the Detroit Dam, whose construction in the 1950s created the narrow, nine-mile long Detroit Lake.
The move comes as Oregon and the wider Pacific Northwest are coming to grips with “the big one” that experts say is coming. Earthquakes in the