Dam failure is a low-probability but high-consequence flood hazard. If a major dam failed, water could move fast and cause major damage downstream.
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Oakland has mapped inundation areas tied to Central, Chabot, Dunsmuir, Lake Temescal, and New Upper San Leandro dams. The plan identifies large exposure in Central East Oakland, Coliseum/Airport, and North Oakland/Adams Point.
This hazard page is using your saved Oakland location: No location selected.
This page is still grounded in the JSON dataset, but this hazard does not yet have ZIP-specific scoring in the current risk CSV.
If you live or work in a dam failure inundation area, your risk is not everyday flooding. It is a rare but serious event that could force you to get out quickly and deal with road closures, utility outages, and flood damage.
A failure upstream could send floodwater into low-lying areas, damage homes and businesses, close roads, and affect hazardous materials sites. In an earthquake-triggered failure, warning time could be very short or absent.
For people in the mapped inundation areas, this would look like a sudden, dangerous flood that can damage buildings, cut off roads, and disrupt utilities.
Dam Failure Preparedness: 0/5 complete
Low riskThis page is the deep-dive layer of the app. Once you understand this hazard, use the map to see spatial context or return to the dashboard to compare it with the rest of Oakland’s hazard priorities.
The LHMP ranks dam failure low because it is unlikely, but the consequences could still be severe in mapped inundation areas. It stays on the app priority list because more than 63,000 people and major lifelines are in the exposure area.