Official website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/flood-desert/
Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, one of the biggest dams in the country blew apart, releasing a wall of water 20 stories high. Ten thousand people lived downstream. FLOOD IN THE DESERT tells the story of the St. Francis Dam disaster, which not only destroyed hundreds of lives and millions of dollars’ worth of property; it also washed away the reputation of William Mulholland, the father of modern Los Angeles, and jeopardized larger plans to transform the West. A self-taught engineer, the 72-year-old Mulholland had launched the city’s remarkable growth by building both an aqueduct to pipe water 233 miles from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the St. Francis Dam, to hold a full year’s supply of water for Los Angeles. Now Mulholland was promoting an immense new project: the Hoover Dam. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam was a colossal engineering and human disaster that might have slowed the national project to tame the West. But within days a concerted effort was underway to erase the dam’s failure from popular memory.
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Thank you.
Yes everything was so fine and dandy in 1928. LA now had plenty of fresh water. Lots of electricity. It was all good. But what did humans do? Kept on breeding and breeding. Now what? 12 million people? Now just bodies everywhere, and ghettos. Crime, traffic, pollution, shortages. All of California must have been a dream in 1920. Man has trashed it. And is trashing everything else he touches. Always under the guise of “growth” “progress” whatever. Drive through Californias central valley now. The chemical fertilizer stench will likely make you gag. We continue to make the same mistakes over and over. I am not confident we will ever learn.
Grew up in California and never even heard of this tragedy. Humans are probably pretty good at hiding the bad stuff.
If the waterway is a tribute to Mulholland, does that make him a tributary?
The greed of the few outweighs the needs of the many
@24:30 the geared train of the inclined railroad in the city of LA in operation.
Why do I think graft and corruption had a great deal to do with this event those many years ago?
Fantasy of an Indian Wells Valley, China Lake VX5 pilot in a loaded A7; dropping multiple 1000 pounders onto the LA Water and Power Aqueducts (2) just under Owen's Peak. lol
LA should desalinate it's water directly from the Pacific. We need to stop relying on the Sierras or the Delta.
Nobody likes to share their water.
So we should make our own
Really enlightening
Thanks for sharing!
Nice seeing all the old pictures of Los Angeles before all the people moved here. Looks weird seeing as a plain and farm land
We were taught this in 1973 in 7th grade in AZ WTF CALIFORNIA'S
calfornialikestostealwater
myspacearisroken.
Did the name Mole Holland.
This is so sad all the people that died or got hurt and displaced from trying to get water to LA over great.
It's all about the greatness or sould be of what white people and the white race actually have accomplished. These articles, stories, and Democrat liberals and Marxists always show minorities as the victims of the mean old white man who actually brought these so-called victims out of the stone age. Left to their own means these people, the minorities, blacks, Indians, Asians, etc., would still be living like cavemen with no toilets, no running water or power, poor health, in starvation, lawlessness and chaos, homeless, and a life span of about 30 years. The white race is what brought humanity out of the stone age and into the future. It is God's plan it seems because it actually happened. White people are still 63% of the population and the race is on now with politicians, illegal immigrants, and minorities to destroy the white race. God help the U.S. if this ever happens because in a matter of a few years we, the U.S. and its citizens, would revert back to B.C. like the Flintstones and the way some of the Democrat blue cities have gone!
i was born and raised in the north san fernando valley (granada hills) and moved north to newhall, canyon countey, valencia, then on to Palmdale. Los angeles was home for 64 years. I finally left last year.
I love how some scream to tear down statues of Lincoln yet this ego driven con artist has one of the most iconic drives named after him.
More water storage needs to be built in CA.
And yet, he still gets a whole canyon named after him.
On February 9th, 1971, in the city of Granada Hills, i was awakened by a devestating earthquake. Soon after i heard a mega horn coming from the direction of the Van Norman dam, "Evacuate the area!!: It was terrifying!
@ 24:30 is that "Angel's Flight", on Hill street and basically the 3rd street tunnel?
We haven’t learned much we have republican senators and house members that back trump and scientists have told them we have to quit burning fossil fuels for a 100 year and they don’t listen to this day.
Didn't take long for the producers to pull the "Race Card" on how poorly "racial minorities" were treated. 11:21
Then at 13:46 the documentary goes on to say "Farmers (mostly white) were treated as imperial subjects"
To me, it seems all races within a certain "class" were treated poorly back then? And the moral of this story seems to be all non-native Americans should leave America and go back to wherever they came from? Or am I missing something? Is this documentary "anti-White", "anti-Wealthy and Powerful" or "anti-all others except Native Americans"? Should the anti-European settler sentiment this documentary seems to be fomenting also include Mexicans who are descendant of European Spaniards since it seems to be going down that road?
Where we went wrong as a society is when we invented money. the worst calamity upon man ever conjured
We should have been doing desalination by solar and wind to day in a big way.
So much was learned from this horrible tragedy. My great Uncle Charles Peter Berkey was a geologist engineer instrumental in designing dam projects all over the country as well as many other massive projects. I'm happy to report that every one of these projects was a huge success and made this country great!
It’s unimaginable now, but you can only dream of what LA would be like if there had been a policy to limit its growth to what is sustainable instead of the abortion it has become. Of course this is true for the country and the world as well.
Damn do something they coming over by the millions you have to speak English and Spanish in Texas now
Im making this comment as someone who already knew about this disaster & i have never lived in southern california i was born/raised around Seattle, yet, i know about this disaster which proves it wasn’t buried from American History, it was buried from California history which has a LONG LIST of burials. Lets talk about the lack of Indian Reservations, the fact the state paid for each Indian scalp a man could plop onto a table, the systematic murder of wealthy Mexican land owners to steal their land from them …all of that makes their treatment of blacks look tame in comparison. However, in the years of recent times you would be shocked to believe such a history could ever exist in such a progressive state.
Oakum was used to patch the cracks? They would have done better with spackle 🫤
Leave it to PBS to inject mythical raycism into and and every story. Well done folks…
…..makes me think of an awesome song—–Tool AEnema