Page - 39 - in Book of Full Papers - Symposium Hydro Engineering

emergency operations center nearly non-stop. Many of the senior engineers had little to no sleep in the days leading up to the evacuation. A multitude of scientific studies have shown that sleep deprivation makes it difficult to adapt to the unexpected. While the authors of this paper are not questioning the decision- making during the Oroville Dam Incident, emergency managers should take the opportunity to learn from this and implement procedures that require those faced with making potential life and death decisions to get a reasonable amount of sleep during prolonged emergencies such as this. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to acknowledge the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the local emergency mangers in Butte County, Sutter County, Yolo County, and the cities of Marysville and Yuba City for answering all our questions about this emergency. Their open and honest responses provided invaluable information that will be used to better understand the flow of information during an emergency and improve emergency management going forward. REFERENCES [1] MILETI D.S., SORENSEN J.H. A Guide to Public Alerts and Warnings for Dam and Levee Safety Emergencies. US Army Corps of Engineers, 2015 39