Liquid Avalanche: Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Monument

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The world can be a scary place, and you don't need to look far to be reminded of that. with stories of all kinds of disaster. Seems we're confronted with a new one every single day. Natural disasters are especially eerie. Humans have always feared nature as we are helpless in the face of a profound power. Droughts. Land blazing fire. hours, the ground splitting open during quakes, whipping winds ripping away homes and tornadoes. and landslides sweeping away entire faces of mountains.

all just the tip of the iceberg. While we have spent thousands of years finding ways to understand weather patterns in an attempt to predict the unpredictable, it's abundantly clear we are no match in the ring pitted against the elements.

The ancient Greeks are Believed that there were four elements that everything was made up of earth, water, air, and fire. Not surprisingly, all four of these things we need to survive. They may be essential to our survival, but as history has proven, They serve as our lifeline, but also potentially as our demise.

Welcome to National Park after Dark. This feels like a disaster episode. Yeah, well, I think I said disaster. Three times? Two or three times. Maybe that's where I got that from. Yeah. I'm glad you were paying attention. Maybe those like small little hints contributed to it. We are doing a disaster episode and it's a gnarly one and it's one that I have never ever heard of before. What wh where are we going? So we're gonna be going to Southern California for this.

And it's all centered around LA, pretty much. So that's why I'm super surprised that I've just never ever heard of it in such a place that is so like all you know Everyone knows everything about LA, I feel like. Yeah, LA is a pretty big place to be. Yeah. So

I kind of got inspiration, I guess if you could say that, inspiration for this story a while ago. Um, I know I've talked about her before. Her name's Caitlin Doughty. Um she is an amazing author. She r has written a lot of books that I enjoy. And I also follow her YouTube page called Ask a Mortician. And she has a lot of really cool videos on there. And none of them are really related to national parks or anything really wilderness.

related, you know, but I was watching some videos a few months ago and she covered the story of the Saint Francis Dam disaster. And I was just so intrigued by it that I wrote it down because I'm like, there has to be some sort of like memorial or like

Mot I don't know how I can tie this into the show, but I just kind of put it off to the side. And then I think with all of the recent flooding that's been happening all over especially in regards to national parks and the framework of the show, like Of course Yellowstone had a huge Yeah, you can't forget about Yellowstone and all the

all the stuff that went on there, I mean, full roads were washed away and ha and buildings and that was wild. It was all over the news recently. Yellowstone and then s even since then, I mean Joshua Tree, Death Valley, they have experienced a lot of flooding as well. I mean, Zion is always huge for that as well. But um So obviously flooding is in the news right now. I know

non national park related to, I think is it Kentucky? Yeah, Kentucky had some really devastating flooding where a lot of people died and they're doing a lot of fundraisers for people who lost their families and there's it was really devastating. It actually happened I was driving through Kentucky

I think two days after it happened and I wasn't really paying attention to my phone'cause it was on my road trip and I was just really distracted and didn't have my phone on me. And I found out a couple of days after I left Kentucky of

the floods that had happened there. And the part that I went to hadn't flooded, so I just didn't notice it. But then I read about it. So I was actually kinda there when it was going on. It's terrifying. I mean Yeah. So Maybe let's link a couple resources for people. in Kentucky. Um, if anybody wants to help out with the aid.

Yeah, we'll add it to our show notes. We'll add some resources for you guys. And I know that we have some listeners in Kentucky, so we're also sending our love to all of you out there. And we hope that you're all safe. Yeah. So let's do that. Um so back to the the I'm trying to make this wrap this whole like inspiration story up. But essentially I had seen this video a while ago. The flooding and the news kind of brought me back to that.

And I found out that the site of this disaster is n a pretty recent as of twenty nineteen a national monument. So here we go. Oh wow. Okay. So it is linked to the National Park Service. Yeah. So now here we go. That's why we're we're heading here today. So Okay, well I don't even think I've heard of a flooding disaster in LA, so I'm already excited to learn s educate me, I wanna know. Well not only is it a deadly flood. This is the one of the deadliest sleds you probably have.

never heard about because the Saint Francis Dam disaster is the second greatest loss of life in California state history and the nation's deadliest engineering disaster of the twentieth century. What? W when did it happen? What year? Nineteen twenty eight.

Okay, so I wasn't alive, so that makes it a little bit No maybe more acceptable that I haven't heard of it, but still if it's one of the worst disasters ever, I'm very intrigued now. Yeah, so and just just for um reference the दे दाद्लियस disaster, greatest loss of life in California state history was the earthquake and then subsequent fires of nineteen oh six. in San Francisco, which I hope you have heard of, because I definitely I have heard of it.

I have heard of that one. Okay, so let's get to the story. And we are going to begin on a Monday. It was March twelfth, nineteen twenty eight, and it began no differently than any other Monday for Tony Harshenfinger. He left his two bedroom home he shared with his girlfriend Leona and six-year-old son Coder for work.

The bungalow was in the shadow of the Saint Francis Dam, where he was employed as a dam keeper, and he walked the quarter mile to work to conduct his usual inspection of the structure. The dam was very impressive. It was 700 feet long, 208 feet high, and held back twelve point four billion gallons of water in a reservoir that was nearly two hundred feet deep and three miles long. which made this the largest man made lake in Southern California.

The face of the dam had five round drainage outlets which could be opened or closed to release water from the reservoir, but today there were dark streaks left in the wake of water running down the dam from the top. Although not concerning in its own right, it showed that the wind was splashing water over the top of the dam and sent it cascading down the face.

This spillage meant that the reservoir was only inches below its maximum capacity. Continuing his inspection, Tony noticed something far more alarming. against the western abutment of the dam, which is where the dam presses against the canyon wall, He noticed more water, but this time it was running muddy. To be clear, cracks and leaks have been documented in this dam before, but not all of them were deemed concerning. The St. Francis Dam was made of concrete.

and cracks formed due to the shrinkage of concrete due to different temperature variations. Some of these cracks develop internally and some are external. And the Saint Francis Dam had seen some of its own in the past. Again, like I said, they can be normal, and they were all investigated and deemed not structurally significant, and they were to be expected within tolerance for the dam. But this leak that Tony noticed was different, because the water was not running clear.

This was worrisome because it indicated the foundation of the dam may be eroding. This, combined with the new cracks found the previous week and the knowledge of the reservoir being at maximum capacity, Tony was worried about all of this, and he immediately contacted his supervisors. A couple hours later, William Maholland arrived with his team to investigate. And do you does that name sound familiar at all to you, Maholland?

It's like a real I know Rodeo drive. Uh oh, do you? Yeah, I've heard of not like by personal experience or anything, but um I've heard of it and I've driven on it. I haven't shopped there but Yeah, I've looked at it at a f from afar in binoculars. Like oh Yeah, I've watched all the rich people walk in the stores and I was Uh Jennifer Gardner. What? Walking the streets. Who is what is that right Pretty Woman? That is not Jennifer Gardner. Are you okay? What's her name?

What do you mean that's not Jennifer Gardner? It's not Jennifer Gardner. It's Julia Pickett. What's her name? Juliette. Oh yeah, you're right. Um they look so simple. No they do not. They look so similar. Okay, we're gonna we gotta move on from this. This is embarrassing. National Park After Dark is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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So Maholland Drive is not Rodeo Drive, but it is equally as famous and it's named after William Maholland. William Maholland came from humble roots and was born and educated in Ireland. He worked several jobs and was a member of the British Merchant Navy before settling in America. After briefly trying his hand at prospecting for gold in Arizona, he landed a job in the 1880s laying pipeline in LA.

He quickly climbed the ladder at the Los Angeles City Water Company, all the while becoming a self-taught engineer. And by 1928, he was named the Chief Superintendent. So he's like the self made man, he's like taught himself engineering and he's really climbed the ranks of The water company, he's he's a big deal. So Maholland and his deputy, Harvey Van Norman, investigated the issue that Tony brought to their attention.

And after looking at it, they deemed that this leak was actually a mixture of clear and muddy water that got mixed together from the construction of a new access road nearby. So they're basically saying this is a leak and yes, it's concerning, but it's not an emergency. So they recognized it, it was a problem, but they thought it was a issue that could be addressed at a later time. It wasn't like

Everything needs to stop and we need to look at this right now. That's interesting because the other guy was clearly very concerned about it. Yes. The keeper of right. The keeper's like, This is an emergency and it sounds like the other people are like, nah.

But it's his boss. It's the chief superintendent, the guy who built and constructed the whole dam. You know? So how are you gonna challenge that? So Maholland and Von Norman did actually do a complete and like inspection of the rest of the s entire dam. And they did give it a green light. So they didn't just like take a look at this one little leak and left. They did look at everything as a whole and they deemed everything normal or at least Sound for now. All was well.

But all was not well at all and just twelve hours later, They'd realize just how wrong they were. But before we get to that, let's talk a little bit about why the dam was there in the first place and how it got there. Because, in and of itself, this is a wild story, which for brevity's sake I'm only gonna touch upon. But if you're interested, there's a few resources that we'll talk about later if you wanna dive into it'cause it is actually it's pretty in it's pretty insane.

So by the early twentieth century, the demand for water in LA was mounting, as was its population. It's really hard to imagine the LA we know now. as it was in its beginning stages, but the early days were vastly different than what it's become. The LA area was settled first by the Tongva and Chumash indigenous tribes. and served as their home for thousands of years. Eventually the Spanish Empire and later the Mexican Republic gained control of it before the Mexican American War took.

After several battles, America eventually gained control of the LA area in 1847. For a couple decades, the area was rough, really dangerous place. and it only had a couple thousand residents and at that point in time the nearby LA River sustained the population that it had of a you know, couple thousand people. But all of that changed rapidly at the turn of the century.

There was a discovery of oil, and then the continued development of LA and then the arrival of the transcontinental railroad changed a lot for the city. In nineteen ten, Hollywood merged into LA and by nineteen twenty one more than eighty percent of the world's industry for movies, like the movie industry, was concentrated in this area. So it went from like

A couple thousand people. It's kinda like a rough and tumble area to everyone is descending on this area. This is Hollywood. This is the place to be if you wanna make it. Yeah. Glitz and Glamour and the whole nine yards. And it was all over the world too,'cause if you think about it. like American movies were kind of the first

real films too, so it's not like there were all these locations all over the world to make movies. It's LA was the spot and the only spot. Yeah. In the early days every that was the place to be if you wanted to get into the industry. So destination seekers, those looking for work, and people looking to settle down in the area completely flooded LA. The population was booming, but the growth of the city had a big limiting factor. And that was water.

not only for drinking, but for different agricultural uses. The area had a semi-arid climate with a lot of inconsistent rainfall. The LA River soon was on its way to completely drying up, which presented a host of different issues and a need for new solutions. But these solutions came at a massive price. What later became known as California's Little Civil War began. Again, this goes

So deep. I mean someone could create an entire like Podcast dedicated to the water wars of California because and it is really fascinating, but again, an abridged version. Basically. It's like someone could create that, not a Not me. Definitely not me. But if someone is inspired right now, we'd love to hear more about yes. Like I I was telling Cassie, I'm like, yeah, I'll be done. By tonight we can we can definitely record tonight. And Cassie was texting me, she's like,

Hello? I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm just I'm going off the deep end with this. Um, so yeah, I condensed it for everyone who's not.

like fascinated by this water dispute situation. But essentially Maholland teamed up with a guy named Frederick Eaton. They had originally worked together in the Los Angeles Water Company, but Eaton was later elected as mayor of LA. So they kind of like joined forces. You know, Eaton was the mayor of LA and Maholland was the superintendent of the city's water company, so this gave them big power. And depending on who you ask,

They probably abused this power a little bit. So they were searching for a water source for LA. The LA River was out, they needed a new solution, and they found it. Two hundred and twenty four miles to the north in a place called Owens Valley, just north of King's Canyon National Park.

Owens River flowed into this valley and provided drinking water and irrigation to the hundreds of ranchers in this area. The large amount of runoff from the Sierra Nevadas in the valley was exactly what Mulholland and Eton needed, so they took it. Essentially. Through a variety of shisty, underhanded, shady moves, they essentially went into the valley under false pretenses.

basically under guise that, you know, they were two ranchers and they bought up tons of land and water rights for way less than they were worth. So while Eaton was buying up all this land and he was doing some like political maneuverings, being mayor and having a lot of sway. I'm lying. And being dishonest.

He also essentially blocked the Bureau of Reclamation, which is the federal agency in charge of water resource management, from building water infrastructure for the residents of Owens Valley. So essentially this cut them off from their own water supply, the people up in Owens Valley. How can you legally do that? There was a lot there I wouldn't say there's a there was a lot because there was a significant lack of

regulations in place and again he was in a place of great power. He knew all the different political loopholes and things like that at the time to get this done. So he's just gonna cut off water to an entire group of people? Mm-hmm. So while Eaton was doing all this, Maholland was doing some like good old public misleading.

So on one hand, he was telling the residents of Owens Valley that LA was coming in and like getting some of their water rights, but they were only gonna use the unused flows. Like they were just using some. of their water. Like don't worry, we're just using part of it. And then simultaneously he was telling the people of LA that he was basically vastly understating the amount of water that they had available in LA. So he's kind of like inciting some panic.

to the city of LA, like, look, we really need this. Like this is really important. Our water levels are super low. That's why we have to go to Owens Valley. So people are like, Yeah, well duh. So they thought they were in a drought. I mean and they were they were going to run out of water. Like based on their population growth, the rate in which it was used, the inconsistent rainfall, they were going to run out of it.

He inflated it a little bit and he was trying to stir up some basically he was trying to get backing from the public of LA. He wanted to create some sort of panic so people would be on his side no matter h the means he was. going to to get right this water. So maybe when, you know, people if and when people in LA found out just how they were getting their water, if they happened to be upset about like, hey, this is kinda messed up.

He'd be like, Okay, well this is the option. So do you want water or not? Type of thing. And people would be like, Okay, well yeah, I need water. Mm-hmm. So by nineteen oh seven the aqueduct, which is a system of Different ditches and tunnels and pipes. That would carry the water from Owens Valley down to LA was under construction. And by 1913, water was flowing from the valley. down into the San Fernando Valley, but it didn't take long for the residents of Owens Valley to catch up

on these shady dealings and they were realizing that their water and subsequently their livelihoods were essentially being stolen. This is a huge farming and ranching community. They can't make money. They can't survive without crops and livestock and water. Well everyone needs water. Right. And water. How do you just be like, sorry, we're gonna take all of your water. Good luck. So they were not happy at all.

And as time went on, more and more water was being diverted from the valley because at first, remember he was like, Oh, we're just taking a little and it wasn't it wasn't like the aqueducts opened and they drained. everything at once. This was kind of like a slow but steady process that eventually ramped up a little bit. But essentially the people of Owens Valley caught on and they were pissed.

their farms and their towns were withering. And what ended up happening was this little California Civil War. So farmers and landowners banded together and full on sabotage this entire project. Intense and violent acts began, including blowing up parts of the aqueduct with dynamite. They would stage protests. They cut off the water supply entirely by opening the valves and just letting it s literally spill out into the desert.

If we can't have it, you're not gonna have it. It's like no one's gonna have water, we're just gonna let it go. Yeah. So they're blowing up things with dynamite. They're doing protests. They're doing like it's a huge everybody's involved. It's not just a couple, a handful of people like the entire Owens Valley communities.

banded together to sabotage this entire thing. And it wasn't just all this like under the, you know, under darkness, the cover of darkness, they blew up a you know, it wasn't all that it was, but they also tried to do things like the legal way, they filed lawsuits and different legal battles literally went on for years.

Yet more reservoirs and more dams were just built in response, including the biggest and most ambitious project that Maholland had taken on yet, and that was the Saint Francis Dam. National Park After Dark is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds.

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Make saving money a priority this year. Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started. That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel. Rocketmoney.com slash cancel. Just as a side note, I had to mention this because I'd be remiss if I did not. But there is a bit of like irony in a lot of layers here, as there always is.

In pretty much every story we've ever done. So the settlers of Owens Valley were so upset over this water situation. The water was being stolen from them, diverted away from them. These same people that are upset about this. had literally just stolen and displaced the northern Paiu people of that area fifty years before. I was just gonna ask when that happened because It seemed like kind of ironic that they're getting their

space, their land, their water stolen quote unquote stolen from them when we know historically speaking that all land in the United States has been stolen. I had to put this in because The so again, I kind of got into it a little bit and it's also very interesting. But the Paiute people were generally primarily nomadic, so they moved from place to place.

But in Owens Valley there was a group of northern Paiute that had settled there because it was just such a prime location. There was tons of water supply, it was rich in natural resources, and it was just a perfect place to make a home. And there's actually evidence of them building their own irrigation networks dating back a thousand years. They have been settled there forever. And Now the people of Owens Valley currently in present day the 1920s are pissed because.

Essentially the same thing is happening. They're like, This is ours, we live there. We live here, we've lived here for ever. And it's like Mm. It's been a handful of years and at least people aren't killing you and abducting your children and forcing you into a completely different culture, but that's a discussion for another time. Either way, getting all your water taken is bad. Yeah. But

It is I see totally what you're saying. Like it's pretty ironic that they're so upset that they're having part of their land and resources stolen from them when that's exactly what they did to other people. So after roughly two years of construction

of the St. Francis Dam because before I got diverted there, the dam was being constructed. So two years later, on May 4th, 1926, it was completed It was built in the San Francisquito Canyon, about forty seven miles northeast from downtown LA. The area that the dam sat in had residents there that were mainly farmers, dam workers, and workers at the two hydroelectric plants, as this dam also provided electricity to residents of the city.

So like I said earlier, the dam was massive. It held over twelve billion gallons of water behind it. And the reservoir provided about two years worth of water for the city. Like that's about how much it could hold at a time. And it was also pretty expensive to build, about$1.3 million. in nineteen twenties money, but actually it came in under budget due to some skimping and cutting corners during the construction process.

which those decisions would later cause some massive problems, and we'll discuss them in a bit, but we're gonna go back now to March twelfth. So Tony that morning had alerted Mahollands, they gave him the green light, the day went on, without incident. That evening, approximately ten minutes before midnight, Ace Hopewell, who was a carpenter at Powerhouse Number One, rode past the dam on his motorcycle.

As he drove by, he noticed two different lights at the base of the dam. They were likely a dam keeper, and, according to records, they were most likely Tony and his son Coder doing the nightly inspection. Ace rode on, continued past powerhouse number two, and further upstream. He pulled over about a mile and a half up the road.

and he just lit up a cigarette, was leaning against his motorcycle, and he started hearing a rumbling. He later described it as rocks rolling on the hill, and he looked around to see where the source was coming from. And he didn't see an issue, he heard the sound fade, and he dismissed it. He attributed the sound to a landslide which is common in the area, but it turns out Ace Hopewell was the last person to see the St. Francis Dam intact and to have survived.

At the same time as Ace was on his motorcycle, Ray Sylvie was working the night shift at powerhouse number one and was on the phone with his friend Lou Burns, who was working in powerhouse number two, located directly below the dam. So powerhouse one is above the dam.

It's the dam and then powerhouse two. And they're talking to each other. And they're on their phone. Yep. They're just talking to each other. At eleven fifty seven PM there was a blip on the powerhouse power board at powerhouse number one. And by twelve oh two, everything was completely black. It was in those moments that the St. Francis Dam catastrophically failed.

The concrete dam blew apart with such force, giant segments of the dam were hurtled like cannonballs half a mile down the canyon, and a one hundred and forty foot high wall of water slammed its way through the canyon.

So we're gonna follow the flood path a little bit. So the first area to be hit was the community at Powerhouse 2. Because like I mentioned, workers and their families lived here. It was a true little community. It was constructed right near the dam. Sixty seven employees and their families lived here in cottages. There were family homes, dorms for single men who didn't have families, there were social centers, schoolhouses for their kids, a kitchen and dining hall, a church.

126 out of the 129 people who lived in this community were killed instantly. Castick was next. And it was hit at around 1 a.m. At this point the waves were still 75 feet high. So this is an hour after it first burst. Water is so scary. It gets worse. So this town was all but completely flattened. There was a father and son, the McKintiers, that thought a storm was actually approaching when they first were standing there. They felt mist on their face.

And then they heard rumbling and they looked over and they saw lights flashing. And by the time they realized what was happening, there were buildings being lifted and washed towards them. and it was just too late to run anywhere. They grabbed onto a utility pole, but the son saw his father get ripped away by a sixty foot high wave of water.

Back in the twenties, this town had cafes, cabins, gas stations. It was a really popular town on a popular travel route, and it was completely obliterated. And today it's known for it. Six Flags amusement park. There's a six flags where all this happens. That is morbid if I've ever like go on this roller coaster, a bunch of people died here.

a hundred years ago. Yeah, well it's welcome. Welcome. But how would you know? You wouldn't know. No, you would never know that. I mean I'm sure there's people who are at the six flags right now. Yeah. That are just walking around and have no idea.

So Pyru was a small town directly in the floodpath next. The water hit the train tracks here so hard that they were ripped out of the ground and twisted like a DNA helix. Some were ripped out and swept away so forcefully they were placed back over completely different areas of roadways miles away. This is one of the several towns along the destruction path that now has small memorial plaques and cemeteries dedicated to the flood victims.

As an example, its cemetery holds the Gatari family, consisting of Joe, Francis, and their six children. Francis, the wife, and five of their children were swept away almost immediately. Joe's five-year-old daughter Lenore was never found, and there is an image of Joe walking the ruins of Piru searching for his family. And he was later buried in the cemetery alongside them in the 1960s when he That is so sad. I I'm telling you this is He lost his entire family except for one second.

Oh my god. As the flood made its way down the valley, word was spreading, thanks largely in part to the hello girls. These were telephone operators, all women, and they were on duty that night and stayed at their posts or returned to their post from home after hearing of the impending disaster. One newspaper later wrote a piece about them, saying, quote There is only one thing that travels faster than a flood. That is warning by telephone.

Many of these girls on duty during the night at their switchboards had no way of knowing but that the water would rise so high as to sweep away their buildings where they were located and drown them at their posts of duty. End quote. So it took a lot of bravery for these women to do everything they could to alert as many people as possible. And they died? All of them? No. It w they were just saying they were just saying that they had no idea if they would die or not.

Oh, okay. But'cause it was po'cause they were close enough where it was possible. I thought you were saying like they all went in and they were just on the phone warning everyone and then they all got swept away. No no no. No. But it was a possibility. They're just Can we say, Oh my God, this is h awful. I hate this. Santa Paula was the largest community on this floodpath, with about 7,000 residents.

The area was known for its citrus orchards, and at one point it actually had the largest acreage of citrus groves in the entire world. These citrus groves used a lot of foreign labor, comprised primarily by Mexican workers. This was the 1920s, and this town, amongst many others, was extremely racially divided.

Many of the groves provided workers with housing on site or near the packing plants, but this housing was rustic at the very best. There was no indoor plumbing, no telephones, no electricity. So at this point, the flood has been raging for about three hours now. And word did reach some of the residents of Santa Paula thanks to the Hello girls, and some of these people were able to reach higher ground in time, but for many, with no means of receiving that warning, they never saw it coming.

The housing was also in an area of the town that had no natural barriers, which meant that the water hit with no impediment at all. The town was all but obliterated when the waters hit at three oh five AM. Oh, so everyone was sleeping in their bed that didn't know. Yeah. And it was a lot of immigrant workers that didn't have access to communication devices and no one warned them. This is just awful. National Park After Dark is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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The floodwater spilled out into the Pacific Ocean between Oxnard and Ventura at five thirty AM. It had traveled fifty four miles over five and a half hours. and was miles long. It carried human and animal bodies, infrastructure and automobiles. In total, an estimated four hundred to six hundred people died in the flood.

But true numbers will never be known, as many of the deceased were undocumented workers. It's crazy to me how powerful water is. Just you describing that it traveled for fifty four miles and it's not like it sounds like it didn't slow down and was something that slowly crept up. It sounds like for this fifty four miles

there were just massive waves, incredible strength of water that was just pummeling these structures and just ripping everything away. Yeah. And a lot of it not only was just the sheer amount of water. I mean over twelve billion gallons of water. But it was also like the way that the aqueducts and the dam was constructed, it was gravity based. So this isn't a flat

area. There there's gravity associated with this. So there's like a downward angle. I mean it's not signific it's not a like canyon that's just straight up and down, but it is a canyon. It's essentially a funnel. and it has a downward angle and it's all leading out into the ocean. So it's just this huge path of destruction. for miles and miles. And of course it did slow down a little bit from when it first burst, but not not enough at all. Also, many of the bodies were never recovered.

such as Tony's, and many were likely swept out to sea, never obviously to be seen again. One person's remains were found on a far distant beach. And he had been picked up by the flood initially sixty-five miles away. So people's remains can be anywhere. And others were found as far away as San Diego. So this is just a lot of power. I feel so stupid being like, this is powerful, but it is. I mean, to drive from LA to San Diego, it's over three hours.

Especially with traffic. So to think that water can carry you that far with that much force. It's just it's When you say like there's no two billion gallons of water, it's hard to picture. Twelve. Because twelve. Twelve billion. Oh my God. So it's hard to picture that much water, but when you put it into perspective of this water carried from around the LA area all the way to San Diego, it's like, wow, this is Really? I d I mean, of course it's a disaster, but it

Just the magnitude of it. It's staggering. It really is staggering. So as the waters receded eventually, like they all jumped out, it the whole reservoir emptied, rescue and recovery workers descended on the valley immediately.

And it was apparent that many of the victims did in fact drown, but actually the majority of them were killed by some form of blunt force trauma because they're getting completely annihilated by houses and cars and telephone poles and w literally anything that in the flood path. I almost wonder if maybe the water too. You know, just the strength of the water hitting you. It's like if you jump from too high of an area onto water and you hit the water, just the force.

Yeah. Is enough to knock you out or really injure you. And I'm just picturing like even if they're not being hit by debris. just that initial contact, especially if you're not in a home and you're outside when this happens or whatever, like that sounds like maybe that could even be enough. Yeah, who knows? And remember Ray Burns from earlier on in the story when he was on the phone? He was working in Powerhouse 2. His remains were recovered.

his torso first, and then several months later his legs, located miles away. He was ripped in half. Wait, what about his head? I I don't know. You said his torso and his legs. Yeah. Where is his arms? I don't know if his arms and his leg and his

head were attached to his torch. I don't know. This is really gruesome. I was trying to give details without going into that many details, but I guess we went through Sorry, I have questions. Oh my god, this is just like it's very, very And this is also months later. So, you know. So the debris and chaos were so severe, it was really difficult to make out much on the floodpath. So workers actually ended up looking up at the sky as a guide.

They were looking for vultures to indicate the presence of different corpses. One man's body was found by just his fingers, they saw fingers. sticking up out of the silt and the mud and he ended up being uncovered and it he was fully intact, but he was standing straight up and down, just completely covered in silt. So Boy Scouts were an integral part of the recovery mission. They were actually given these white flags on these really long poles.

and they were sent out and they traveled through the silt and the debris and they were searching and scanning for survivors, but more often than not, they would discover remains. So they would They sent children out for this? Were they out of search and rescue people? They thought that children were the This was the twenties and there were like I guess ch were child labor laws in place at this point? Imagine so, but

I I don't yeah, I can't comment on it. It's just it's wild to think about now. I just can't imagine sending children out for a rescue mission that you already know is horrific. Right. So they were like okay here are these poles with these flags, if you discover remains just plant this flag here and it marks For other teams that had like mules and like carts and things, they would just look for the flags and go and recover the bodies and remove them.

But the Boy Scouts were marking them. And there were actually pyres which were constructed along the sides of the floodpath that would actually they would just load up debris and different animal carcasses. and just burn them right there on site. It took too much effort and resources to extract all these things and remove them. So a lot of the time they just burned it right there.

makeshift hospitals and morgues started popping up everywhere along the valley. And I mean everywhere. Dance halls, feed stores, and general stores were all converted.

to hospitals or morgues to house the dead or the dying. And as I mentioned, this was a really racially segregated town at the time, and that included the hospital. So there's a story of a thirteen year old girl, her name was Thelma Macaulay. She was in her home when the flood hit and she felt her house lift up, like while she was in it with her family. And she ended up escaping out of the back door, but was immediately swept away by the water.

Nine miles later, she ended up getting caught up in a tree and blacked out. She woke up in the hospital. That was the next thing she remembered. She was waking up in the hospital or makeshift hospital, I should say. It could be, you know, somebody's wherever she was, she was receiving medical attention to some degree. And she woke up and she was so covered in silt and muck that the hospital staff originally mistook her for a little Mexican girl.

And sh we she started speaking to them because she came too and they were kind of taken aback and they wiped some of the mud and debris off of her face and obviously revealed that she was Caucasian. And immediately they're like, Oh, we're we're bringing you somewhere else and they transported her to a better facility. There's just this massive disaster. Hundreds of people have died and their first medical concern is your ethnicity and your race. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. That's just so and you're a child. It's not even like you're Not to say that adults don't deserve care or anything, but there's just a different level of medical attention I feel like that goes to children because they are the young, they're the innocent, they're the ones that you're always trying to protect and save. And to be a child and be like, oh, well

They're not Caucasian, so we can kinda Yeah. It's fine. She just went through she just went through this horrible disaster, was carried nine miles. She's knocked out, she's covered in mud, she's Like and they didn't even bother to wash her either. She wakes up in the hospital and they haven't even bothered to wash the dirt and mud off of her.

Just telling you what I read. I know. I know. I it's just like it's so infuriating. It's just Um well just a little a little more on that note to really get you fired up. Oh no. So the US Red Cross stepped in to provide aid, but so too did the La Cruz Azul Mexicana, the Mexican Red Cross, run primarily by Mexican women and the Mexican consulate, they helped translate for Mexican and Spanish speaking flood survivors. So they were pr providing aid for

a majority of people that were probably not getting the standard of care, clearly, as we just saw that others were. So they stepped in and helped, but officials wouldn't interview. the Spanish speaking or Mexican survivors because they deemed them unfit. Unfit for what? Because they were not white. They're like, Well, uh like we don't want to hear about you, we wanna hear from Thelma or whoever the hell. So this led to a serious

Gap in the St. Francis Dam disaster's history. Like who knows how many untold stories there are. from v survivors, their families, different victims that I mean, there's so many unidentified or unaccounted for deaths and who knows how many of those gaps could have been filled if we just listened. the other. Anyone who wasn't white is it's just so frustrating. Especially in California, like you're so close.

to Mexico too. There's such a huge population of people. It it's just And LA was founded af after obviously the indigenous tribes were uh we know how that goes. During the Spanish-American War and all that, like this part of California was very recently acquired by the United States.

the LA was founded by the Mexican people, essentially, as we know it now. So it's kind of like to just totally cut out and not listen to the vast majority of who was affected by this incredible disaster is just it's insane.

It's just wild to me that something so horrible can happen for a natural disaster and then you're trying to figure out what happened and you have all these people who witnessed it and you're like, oh no. And I feel like maybe part of it was because maybe there was a language barrier that no one was willing to speak with translators to like get through because it was like I picture it being an inconvenience, you know, like you're not gonna You don't speak Spanish, so you're not gonna

talk to someone and you know, I just feel like it was players. There's translators. That's what I feel like. I feel like people are like, oh no, like we can't talk to them. We don't even speak the same language. And It's like more of like a lazy like excuse. fueled by hate. But the other thing is they didn't even need an excuse because it was just the way it was then. It was so it was just racially segregated. I mean, there was a huge chapter of the KKK in this area.

It's so it's just yeah. And I don't wanna We can get off. I feel like I could go off on this forever because there's still like a lot of um racially fueled things in medical care today. So to say like I can't believe this happened, like I can't. But then you go into some practices that are still going on today that are just um it's just so scary and it's so sad. There's still, you know, echoes of the issue, however many years later. Oh yeah. I like

I've like I won't get super into this, but not to get like super into this. But um me, I've had kidney disease my whole life. I've had two kidney transplants. When you do your blood work, it shows all of your blood work. And at the very bottom, it says, your GFR, which is essentially your kidney function, and it says if your GFR is this number and you're African American, you're actually not as sick.

Which is really complicated because I could have the same levels as someone who's African American and be eligible for a kidney transplant. But they have to get sicker before they're eligible. And it's this huge problem in medical that's just like one example that I've like physically seen myself and it's just like it always

really bothered me. And I remember looking it up. And it was based on this horrible science of saying that African American people are like stronger, they have tougher skin, they have tougher blood, like whatever it is, which has no scientific basis at all. It's still happening today. How is that still taken as it's twenty twenty two? Like, if this study was done in whatever fucking year that was

Clearly there has to be It's a fight that's still happening today. I'm so taken aback by this. I had no idea. God, and now I have to tell the rest of the story about the damned disaster? I don't wanna do that. I'm caught up on this now. I mean they're both really bad. I know it's like, all right, let's dive into this. It's like, oh yeah, I was telling a completely different story. Um sorry to like throw you off. It was just like when you're talking about the racial stuff and

Uh medical care, I'm like, this is so prevalent even today, a hundred years later. Wow, yeah, okay. Well, thank you for interjecting because it's something I certainly didn't know about and um nor would I have ever guessed. was even an an issue. Like if someone said that was a problem I and told me to guess the year.

I would probably place it somewhere around the early nineteen hundreds. And Yeah, you're like, oh yeah, that happened a long time ago when people were a lot more fucked up than they are today. And it's like, well, actually National Park After Dark is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds.

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So there was one survivor who lived to tell his tale and actually had it recorded by reporters and people who were interested in listening. Um, of course he was white, but he had his story taken down and he had said he was in a car when the flood waters reached him. He crawled out of the window as the car was bouncing along the water, and he got out onto the hood and was holding on as hard as he could, but was just

easily ripped away by the water, and he recalled being tossed around like a complete rag doll. The waves were thick with mud and debris, and when he was asked how he survived, he responded Quote, It must have been ten thousand miracles. I knew I was going to die, but I wasn't a bit afraid. I was consumed with curiosity. what it's gonna look like because I'm going to the next world. For many, they did go to the next world.

The city of LA did their best to ensure all of the recovered bodies were given a proper burial, and any unclaimed bodies were actually buried in mass graves located in the towns of Ventura and Santa Paula. The city also paid out fourteen million dollars to the victims' families. Maholland arrived at what remained of the Saint Francis Dam at two thirty AM on March thirteenth. And he and investigators immediately began trying to piece together what caused this catastrophic failure.

The city initially tried to point fingers at the Owens Valley residents. suggesting that they blew up the dam or caused some sort of malfunction that led to its demise, but that was quickly dismissed. Forensic investigators actually surveyed the aftermath and used the huge chunks of concrete that were blown away from the dam and kind of scattered.

across the valley to piece back together kind of like a jigsaw puzzle of w how it came apart and what could have led to the way in which it fell apart to get a better picture of what just what the hell happened. So that combined with previous reports of the cracks and the different structural issues painted a much different picture than

Somebody from Owens Valley blew up the dam. There is still differing theories on the failure, so nothing has been a hundred percent landed upon and agreed upon. But there was a committee that was appointed by the LA City Council. And they placed the failure at defective foundations and said that the dam was well designed, but it was poorly executed.

there was still a lot of debate about which abutment, so which place on the dam, which side of the dam, essentially where the dam met the valley and the canyon wolves, which one of those failed first, like they don't even know to this day which one failed first. But J David Rogers, who's a geological engineer, believed that a landslide caused the failure by shifting the foundation, which caused the dam to lean forward.

And this could have caused the cracks that were first noted in the weeks prior to the failure. So maybe it wasn't just concrete settling, like that normal cracks that can be found. in dam structures. Like something hap like a landslide happened and caused And it definitely could explain the muddy water that Tony had reported the very morning of the disaster, not just, oh, this is a combination from some construction that's mixing with a regular normal leaf.

like this shift in the foundation would cause this muddy watered leak that Tony saw and was really concerned about. There was also a phenomenon that wasn't completely understood at the time of the construction, but the dam definitely didn't take into account properly, and that's called hydrostatic uplift. So it's basically when the water seeps underneath the dam and causes a slight uplift on the dam, which decreases its weight because it's kind it's not floating obviously, but it's more buoyant.

and therefore its effectiveness at holding back twelve point four billion gallons of water is compromised. So it's been theorized that this may have also contributed or lent a hand in the disaster in conjunction with the unstable land in the canyon. in the landslide. So they're thinking that it probably a combination of factors that kind of just created the perfect storm. And I briefly mentioned cutting corners originally. So the original build plans changed halfway through construction.

They decided to add an additional ten feet to the top of the dam, but they never widened the base. the base stabilizes the entire structure and it was never widened. And also the dam had a curved shape and had these large five foot long steps kind of carved into the face. of the dam to help with the curvature.

And what did not help though was the lack of what's called contraction joints, which are used to help regulate the location of cracking due to changes in the structure. So it basically As the concrete changes and fluctuates with different temperature changes and things like that, these joints help stabilize the entire structure, but they didn't utilize those.

So that led the entire structure being pretty inflexible and therefore also lent to its instability. A lot of oversight, a lot of whether it was intentional or not, or w whatever the hell, it clearly was not done properly. And Maholland received a lot of shit for this. I mean, death threats. There were even signs posted throughout the entire valley saying like, kill Maholland, hang Maholland, like people We're like because of this guy, my whole family's dead.

And although Mahulan took complete responsibility for the failure, his career was utterly ruined and he retired later that year. No criminal charges were ever filed against him or any of the the crew or anybody involved in the construction of the dam. because this inquest and this investigation found that there was no criminal intent.

What about negligence though? I mean there's not criminal intent behind negligence a lot of time, but you still have to pay a price. Yeah, I didn't get into m at all really or deeply is and if you're interested, you can look into um a couple of different things I'll mention at the very end. But

There was a lot of, like I said, shady dealings, shisty things going on. And part of that wasn't just stealing water from Owens Valley, it was kind of going through loopholes and getting around different regulations and because they were building in kind of like this private municipal subset of like it wasn't regulated by there was no oversight. There was no regulations. They kind of just did whatever they wanted. And

Yeah, like it wasn't just like somebody was like, I'm gonna build a dam. Like they did have experience. It they just didn't do it. There was no federal oversight that they had to comply with. So there was not a lot of strict safety regulations or building codes or things like that at the time that they had to answer to. And that's kind of how they came in under budget, under, you know, their deadline. They kinda just like really got this together, probably because they didn't have to

check all the boxes and report to people and all of that. So I will say the disaster was obviously horrific, but because of all this and all of the, you know, getting around different safety measures and not adequately you know, widening the base when they changed plans and things like that. It did eventually lead to stricter regulations, including the California Dam Safety Act. So there was a little bit of something came out of it. Yep. Something did come out of it.

So a among other things. I mean there's other things too and I just I I can't can't get into it. But um like there's so much so many aspects to this story. Yeah, I'm really trying to just like give you a taste of each little um each little thing. But So at this point the Saint Francis Dam is gone, except for one massive central piece of the dam, and it was nicknamed the tombstone.

it became a morbid tourist attraction and people came from all over the country to see the remains of the disaster and to collect different pieces of the dam to take home as like little souvenirs and things. And this tombstone, I mean, it's giant. If you look up like Saint Francis Dam tombstone, it's like this giant central piece of the dam that's just still standing straight up and down.

And it still has it's still there today. No. This is back this is nineteen twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty nine. So th it still had those like big steps and everything, like it was this huge piece of the dam and people were going there, climbing all over it, taking pictures of it, doing all you know, it was just this big tourist attraction. Oh yeah, I just looked up a photo of it and it Yeah, it's huge. It's huge. And one day one of these people going to

explore it essentially. He was eighteen years old. He was climbing up on it and he fell. And he didn't die right away. He was transported to the hospital, but he did eventually pass away in the hospital due to that fall. So the d the city of LA was like that we can't have this anymore. Like it's already claimed. hundreds and hundreds of lives and now people are still losing their life. So they um they basically blew it up with dynamite and it's completely obliterated. So it's no longer there.

The last confirmed victim of the flood was found in the 1950s. And the last suspected victim of the flood was found in nineteen ninety-four. remains of people that are thought to have died in this flood are still being found in the area. Well, up until nineteen ninety four, but who knows? Wow. I mean I was alive in nineteen ninety four. So that's just Wow. the layers of silt were and just like, you know, it's just It's not hard to imagine that

there is so much still buried in the valley and who knows, you know, what's And the fact that it goes on for miles. You don't have a small fifty four miles. Yeah. So the San Francisco That's hard to say. The San Francisquito Canyon today is very different from what was left in the immediate aftermath of the flood.

There are coyotes, cougars, black bears, cotton tail rabbits, rattlesnakes, lizards, like just some those are just some of the fauna species that are living amongst the flora, like sagebrush, cottonwood, and sycamore. you can actually hike to the site of the ruins of the St. Francis Dam, which as of right now is not very well marked. Like you can't like just look it up on all trails and go.

The road that led to the area was closed several years ago due to storm damage, but the old San Francisco Canyon Road is accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists. The track is about one point six miles each way and and there have been memorial and informational boards placed throughout the area. Scattered throughout the canyon are still giant chunks of the concrete dam and you can easily visualize the path of destruction that billions of gallons of water traveled in nineteen twenty eight.

The Saint Francis Dam National Memorial Foundation, which is a nonprofit, was established the same year as the National Monument, which like I mentioned earlier was in twenty nineteen. And right now the Memorial Foundation is currently raising funds to build and maintain a visitor center and to construct a memorial wall that will have all of the known victims' names inscribed in it. And if you want to learn more about the dam, the all the water wars All the underhanded and

Shady Behavior. There is a book called Flood Path. And there's also a book called Cadillac Desert. And those are my recommendations for books regarding the subjects. And there's also I didn't watch it just a forewarning. So I'm not gonna recommend it'cause I don't know if it's good, but there is but it exists. But it exists. And there is a it's fictional. But it's loosely based on the California water disputes and it stars Jack Nicholson. It's from the 1970s. Oh interesting.

if anybody is interested in that. If you want to like learn a little bit about it but also don't want to be inundated with like however long this just was, an hour and a half or whatever. facts and things like that if you just wanna hear kind of about it and also be wrapped up in a fictional, more lighter hearted story. Um There's that, if you wanna watch that. And that's it. That's the Saint Francis Dam disaster of nineteen twenty eight.

Wow. Well, I'm glad you did this because I had never heard of it before, which is wild because it's such a horrific and huge incident. But um It was I feel like I learned a lot of history today, which is some of my favorite episodes that we do, is learning about this crazy history that has happened. So I'm excited that you pick this story. And it's also just very I mean, water wars in California and in other places, especially in the western United States, like w it's I mean, water is

everything, obviously. And it's an issue that we're gonna see a lot of disputes over forever, I think. So to learn especially with the West drying up too. So to learn a little bit about kind of what has been done in the past and maybe what we could be looking at in the future. It's just it's good to know this stuff. And, you know, you look at LA and it's like to think of it as this little, like dusty, small Kind of like town that no one really cared about.

to all of a sudden what it is now. Which is not a small town. You never look at it and be like, hmm, okay, well geographically, where is this how is this happening? Because there's no water here. Where is it coming from? You never think about it. And to be fair, I actually don't know where the water comes from right now. Where is the water coming from? I don't know. I didn't have the mental

capacity to look into that. I'm just telling you. It's like I just realized that I might want to know those. I actually don't know. But it's coming from somewhere and hopefully it's not being stolen from other people. And Owens Valley today actually in the aftermath of this entire thing, it was a complete it completely dried up.

It was a complete wasteland and so many of the the community just went bankrupt, had to move away. Like the they completely had their community ruined. I can imagine. I mean, if you can't have water then you can't live there. But that's really that's sad. So that's all I know about dams. and water for now. And I feel like I learned a lot today about um engineering. And

I hope you did too. I didn't shove everything I learned onto you because you'd be like, All right. Danielle School of Engineering. Please join. Please join. Well yeah, that's it. And uh I hope that everyone um Maybe now it's a trivia. It's like a bar trivia thing now. It's like, what is the second greatest loss of life in California State?

You'll know. Now you're gonna know. You'll know. Well All right, well on that you all go. We're like, okay, please shut the fuck up. Like, I'm pegging you to fucking stop. Okay. We'll see you next time. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at npadstories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at N P A D.

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