haha, that's precisely how a levee break might occur. A drought lulls people into comfort levels, security measures are forgotten, and emergencies occur. Sacramento's levee system is vastly out of date and apt to breaks in several vulnerable areas (from what I've heard as a "environmental studies" student at CSUS). But seriously, we have safety measures in place that have worked well in the past (at least in the city of sacramento) and should prove useful this year as well. Good luck to the outlying areas, however, especially the levee containing the Cosumnes River. That is most likely to break if anything (again referencing the experts at CSUS)

I've been told that if the levee near downtown were to breach then the water would be up to 13 feet deep in the downtown area. A few years ago when the rivers were high there were some boils found in the levee behind the Rusty Duck restaurant near Discovery Park. Folks I know that work for the Dept. of Water Resources downtown moved their cars to the upper floors of the parking garage.......