[sliken]

Was hoping to hear more about other dams, the article focuses on Oroville. Lake Berryessa for instance is a concrete dam, much more like hoover than Oroville. It was built before they realized there was a nearby active fault, the Green Valley Fault.

Lake Oroville (in the NYT article) is the 14th largest lake in California, Berryessa is #11. Lake Oroville does hold twice as much water when full though

The big concern is that Winters was flattened by an earthquake in 1892 and the same size quake at a fault near lake Berryessa, which is only 7 miles from the winters, would breach the dam. I've heard it discussed several times in geology circles, there's even a simulation of the result. It goes poorly for winters (7,000 people or so) and Davis (65,000 people). Here's the simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEJEHnKrueo

[fencepost]

If you look at a terrain map [1] it looks like things flatten out a lot not far below the dam. As you say, bad for Winters and Davis, but not "terrifying wall of water" bad for much else downstream.

[scapecast]

As someone who drives around that area a lot, I can confirm that things do flatten out a lot. Everything West and East of I-5 is orchards, as well as North and South of I-80.

Quite a bit of that area is already water (the Delta), and we've seen during the heavy rains during 2017 (the period the article refers to) how the land around it can take a lot of flooding.

I've driven down the road from the dam to Winters, and the chutes I think would act like a giant water cannon. I wouldn't have high hopes for Winters. Driving down that road, I kept thinking "why would anyone buy real estate here?" - yet people do.