A major removal project began to extract 750 tons of metal and concrete from the riverbed of the North Fork of the American River. The debris consists of the remnants of the Georgetown Bridge near Auburn, destroyed when a partially built dam burst on Dec. 23, 1964. Torrential rains and snowmelt fueled floods that displaced thousands and caused major river surges. Massive bridge girders remain embedded in the riverbed and present underwater hazards due to mangled metal and jagged edges. Plans for a reservoir that would have submerged the debris never materialized, leaving the wreckage in place for decades.
Higher up in the Sierra Nevada, on the Rubicon River, rain and snowmelt pounded against the Hell Hole Dam. But on the morning of Dec. 23, 1964, the partially built dam burst, releasing a "hurtling wall" of water downstream toward Auburn, where a surge of frothing, fast-moving water took out the Georgetown Bridge on Highway 49, near the confluence of the North Fork and the Middle Fork of the American River.
"It's really difficult to get a sense of the scale of what actually is under the water that you can't see," said Cheyenne Toney, senior civil engineer for the Placer County Department of Public Works, in a video about the project. Toney described bridge girders that are 10 feet tall and 200 feet long, stuck in the riverbed, noting that most people aren't aware of the underwater hazards created by the mangled metal and jagged edges from the old, destroyed bridge.
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