| LIFE IN SOLERA | SEPTEMBER 2024 | 25
It was two-and-a-half
minutes before midnight on
Monday, March 12 in 1928
when the 185-foot-tall St.
Francis Dam collapsed north of Los Angeles, some 10 miles up the
San Fransquito Canyon from the towns of Saugus and Newhall.
A 100-foot wall of water crashed its way through the narrow
canyon and wiped out all of the workers' homes a mile south —
and it crushed Los Angeles Power Department's Powerhouse #2
like an eggshell. The flood waters widened out and erased all or
parts of Castaic Junction, Piru, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Montalva
along its 54-mile journey to the Pacific Ocean just below Ventura.
The death toll would reach well beyond 450, second in
California only to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
Fifty years later, on March 12, 1978, Don Ray and his journalism
professor, Bill Thomas, hosted a reunion of the survivors and their
families. Don Ray and Bill Thomas conducted in-depth interviews
with the survivors and others who were involved in the disaster.
For the very first time in public, you will have the opportunity
to hear the actual voices of many of those survivors, all of whom
have since passed away. Please attend Don Ray's presentation of
"The Voices of the Survivors of the St. Francis Dam Disaster" on
Sept. 9 at 4:30 pm in Oakmont Rooms 1 -2.
HISTORY
GROUP
