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Last December, the Baldwin Hills dam in Los Angeles broke
and sent millions of gallons of water cascading through the city,
leaving three persons dead and thousands homeless. It was the
worst ·/food disaster in the area since the St. Francis dam burst
in northwestern Los Angeles county, killing 450 people.
PoPULAR ScrnNCE this month presents a dramatic account
of the earlier disaster-which s-purred the passing of legislation
that was to prevent such catastrophes from ever happening
again. But one did, and once again a ravaged community can
only ask: Why did it happen?

The Day the

Dam Burst

Just 36 years ago, the mighty St. Francis dam

collapsed, loosing a 125-foot wall o,f ·water
that drowned a sleeping California valley

By Wesley S. Griswold

U NDER a star-bright sky, in the hour before da~
on March 13, 1928, a U.S. Navy cruiser was slicing
southward through the tranquil waters of Santa
Barbara Channel. The vessel's course for Long Beach took
it within 10 miles of the California coast between Ventura
and Oxnard.
Suddenly, the lookout shouted, "Wreckage dead ahead!"
An officer on the bridge quickly ordered the cruiser
stopped. As it slid to a halt, searchlights flashed on. Their
blue-white beams pointed to a horrifying and wholly
mystifying sight.
Across the path of the ship lay a broad swath of silt-
soiled water. In it floated corpses of horses and cattle,
rooftops, trees, barn timbers, and a forlorn stream of house-
hold po,ssessions . .
Here was the unmistakable evidence of a major flood.
Yet the cruiser lay off the mouth of a river known to be
normally dry. There had been few rains lately. They were ·
never frequent in this locality. Floods were unknown;
The cruiser's radio operator urgently queried Long Beach
Naval Station .. What had happened? No one on d:uty knew The barren foothills
88 POPULAR SCI ENCE MARCH 1964