(dramatic music) - You can really sense
what it would be like to just be right in the flood path. 12.5 billion gallons of
water headed this way, like a serial killer and nobody could warn them
of what was about to happen. Oh yeah, the dam's fine. There's no water coming
through, it's gonna be great. (dramatic music) "Chinatown", a movie I hadn't seen but I knew it was all- - Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown. - For years I assumed that
this classic film was about, oh, I don't know Chinatown. Only recently did I
find out that the movie, directed by longtime
fugitive from justice, Roman Polanski is actually
loosely based on a true story of water rights and land
usage in 1930s, Los Angeles. And I was like, that
seems a little boring. To be honest, I live in LA and I don't really care about that but here's the thing. Early 20th century water
disputes are actually interesting and hopelessly tragic, especially a story you've probably never heard, the failure of the Saint Francis Dam. Now the worst disaster in
California history was in 1906, the San Francisco earthquake
and subsequent fire. Over 3000 people died. But the second worst disaster and the largest manmade
disaster was the all but forgotten failure of
the Saint Francis Dam. It's estimated it killed 600 people but so many were immigrants and workers, we'll never really know
the true death toll. By numbers, the dam failure is still one of the worst disasters
in US history period, eclipsed only by modern events like 9/11. "Chinatown", the movie has
sordid affairs and shootouts and all kinds of malfeasance. But the true story of
bringing water to Los Angeles was so much worse. The Saint Francis Dam was
completed on May 4th, 1926. It would stand for less than two years. Dean Keagy was driving
his car to Powerhouse One where he worked as a warehouseman. As he glanced at the great white dam, practically glowing in the dark, he saw a few stray lights
at the base of the dam on the canyon floor. Was that dam keeper, Tony Harnischfeger, and his son Coder. Did they see something? No one else would ever see? Did they know something nobody else knew? Just that morning Tony,
the dam keeper had alerted the chief engineer, William Mulholland and his deputy, Harvey van Norman, that the west abutment of the
dam was leaking muddy water, a sign that the foundation
of the dam was failing. Around 10:30 AM, Mulholland
and Van Norman drove out to the dam, said that the
water was running clear and that everything was safe. Reports would later say
that Tony was scared. A couple of days earlier on
March 10th, an acquaintance of Tony said, Tony mentioned
he had been reprimanded for talking in the manner I
have and that if he continued to do so, he might lose his job. If it was Tony and his son
at the base of the dam, just before midnight, he had only minutes before
his worst fears were realized. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's talk water. By the early 20th century, it became abundantly clear that the city of Los Angeles needed water. After the Mexican American
War, Los Angeles in the 1850s and '60 was a violent and
forlorn backwater town but that reputation wouldn't last. And by the time the
transcontinental railroad rolled into town in 1876, it
was a sunny destination for health seekers and settlers alike. A visitor to Los Angeles in the 1860s when there was only a
few thousand inhabitants, if you can believe that said, all that is wanted to naturally
make it a paradise is water, more water, he probably
didn't have that voice but maybe he did. By the late 19th century, the need for water could no
longer be avoided despite the decimation of the Los Angeles river and the other limited water supplies, the men who made Los Angeles refuse to slow the population boom
that LA was undergoing. New sources of water had to be found if the city was to survive. So Los Angeles put its trust in a man named William Mulholland. Mulholland was an Irish immigrant and in many ways, the embodiment
of the American dream. Mulholland was a self-taught
engineer, nicknamed The Chief. And he quickly impressed
his bosses and moved up to superintendent by age 31. His goal was to find a water
source that would give LA and the San Fernando Valley, more water than they could ask for. Much more water than they asked for, that's foreshadowing if it
was not clear to the viewer. Mulholland led this search
along with his friend, former mentor and one
time LA mayor, Fred Eaton. They turned their attention to the Owens Valley 224 miles away. The Owens river flowed into
the valley and provided water and irrigation for hundreds
of ranches in the area. Here's how this happens. Eaton rolls into town
under the guise of being a fellow rancher, just
a good old boy rancher, here to do some ranching. So he's basically doing a, how do you do fellow
kids to the Owens Valley? He starts buying up land and
water rights for far less than the land was worth. The farmers and ranchers
believed their land isn't worth much at all when
in fact it's extremely valuable because all the water is
about to be taken away to Los Angeles. Once this is discovered, an Owens Valley newspaper headline read, Los Angeles plots destruction, would take Owens River, lay lands waste ruin people,
homes and communities. They were not happy. And it began what was thought of as California's Little Civil War but Mulholland is happy as can be. He had his water source
and by November of 1913, he completed his aqueduct. Thousands of Angelenos attended
the inaugural flow of water into the Valley. On the unveiling of his
greatest achievement, one of the greatest
engineering achievements in modern American history at the time, Mulholland said, only
water was needed to make of this region a tremendously
rich and productive empire. And now we have it. Is that Scottish? But the glory of the aqueduct
would be short lived. You know those folks
back in the Owens Valley, well, they started blowing up parts of the aqueduct with dynamite. In their defense there once
fertile land was depleted. And when they did try to
divert water for their own use, they faced legal action from Los Angeles. These bombings would
continue happening for years and we'll come back in this story later. So now that Mulholland
has stolen the water, it's time to store the water, enter the Saint Francis Dam built in the San Francisquito
Canyon in Santa Clarita, 47 miles North of downtown Los Angeles. The project kept getting bigger in scope, ending up at a height of 195 feet. And the ability to hold 12.4
billion gallons of water in the reservoir. That was 25% bigger than
the original design. In a gravity dam, like the
Saint Francis dam was the width of the base is what stops
the dam from tipping over. But despite the big increase
to the dam's height, no change was made to its base. Mulholland though was still confident that it was a safe dam. In Powerhouse One, Ray Silvey
was working the night shift. He laughed over the phone
with electrician, Lou Burns over at Powerhouse Two in
San Francisquito Canyon, below the dam. At 11:57 PM there was a blip on Powerhouse One's control board but at 12:02 AM, everything went black. (sloshing water) At 12:02 AM, when billions of
gallons of water burst forth from the Saint Francis Dam, it didn't just decimate
William Mulholland's legacy. It's swept up and spat out
many hundreds of people in all the towns along the flood path. Makeshift morgues popped up everywhere with survivors crowding around
them to look for loved ones. American Legion headquarters,
general stores, feed stores and even dance halls were
converted into morgues. One poolroom slash dance hall
in New Hall was so quote, hastily repurposed as a morgue
that they didn't have time to take down decorations
from a recent party. And the dead were greeted
with a cheery sign that read, welcome. Let's take this backwards
from where the flood ended to where it all started. That was some light breaking and entering which we may do quite a lot of today. Where I'm standing right now
on the beach between Oxnard and Ventura is where the flood finally hit the Pacific ocean at 5:30 AM. By the time it got here, it had gone 54 miles over
five and a half hours and was miles long. Today this looks like a
beautiful California beach but imagine it on the morning
after the flood with debris trees, trash, gnarled
structures and bodies, both animal and human. One of the saddest parts
is we'll never really know how many people died. There are estimates ranging
from 400 to 600 people but so many of those were
undocumented Mexican workers and who knows how many were swept out to sea? There was one man whose
body was found down on the Oxnard shoreline,
who originally was picked up by the flood a full 65 miles away. There were bodies found
as far as San Diego, some even say the Mexican border. The largest city along the flood path in the Santa Clara River
Valley was Santa Paula with a population of over 7,000 people. Santa Paula was a mining and oil town but quickly became a citrus
town starting with oranges and then moving to lemons. At one point, the Limoneira Company which is still here today,
had the largest acreage of lemon orchards in the world
and were cold citrus barons. Not surprisingly they used foreign labor to pick their fruits, starting with Chinese labor,
moving to Japanese labor. And then because of racist, exclusionary immigration
laws to Mexican labor. Santa Paula in the 1920s years was an incredibly racially divided town. They had quote, a proud
chapter of the KKK. The Limoneira Company provided
the Mexican laborers places to live here among the orchards
and near packing plants. But these were bare bones houses with no indoor plumbing or electricity. The locals called it Spanish Town. Santa Paula had no protection from a hills or other natural barriers
when the flood hit at 3:05 AM. Some were able to look for
safety at higher ground but not everybody in Santa Paula got word of the oncoming water. The Mexican laborers living
here in the orchards were doubly in danger because one, they
were smack in the middle of the flood path and two, they
didn't have any electricity or telephone so nobody could warn them of what was about to happen. Very few people in the
Santa Clara River Valley had telephones in 1928. Nonetheless telephones
played an important role when the Saint Francis Dam flood broke. Some of the heroes of the
Saint Francis Dam disaster, where the so-called Hello Girls, phone operators in the
towns along the flood path, who stayed at their switchboards, furiously calling as many
people as they could to warn of the water barreling down upon them. In some cases, this warning
came with only minutes to spare but those minutes
were the difference between life and death. If it hadn't been for the Hello Girls, hundreds more would have died. Even with all the heroes and helpers that emerged that night, stories about who did
and who did not survive, reveal a place in time that
was stubbornly divided by race. There's the story of Thelma Macaulay. The 13-year-old girl
suffering from measles, really a bad month for her all around. Who, when she felt her house
lift upwards in the water, scrambled to get her mother,
father and 17-year-old brother out of the house. And she'd escaped out the back door. After being carried for
nine miles by the water, Thelma found herself stuck
in the branches of a tree. She succumbed to exhaustion
and woke up later in the Santa Paula Red
Cross station for survivors. A woman came over and started bathing her. Upon washing the silts
and debris off of Thelma, the woman exclaimed, oh
why you're a white girl. And immediately had her
transferred across the street, into her own home for further care. Even in the aftermath of a tragedy, the makeshift hospitals and
morgues were segregated. Luckily where the American
Red Cross fell short, LA Cruz Azula Mexicana
stepped in run primarily by Mexican women and
the Mexican consulate. They translated for Spanish
speaking flood victims but even with the translators, officials largely wouldn't
interview Mexican survivors, deeming them unfit to give their account. To this day, we still don't
know many of their stories. This is Piru cemetery which you may recognize from our Green Death Revolution video. Anything for that forever corpse. I didn't remember that at all
until we showed up here today and I was like, oh, I know you. The tiny town of Piru was one
of the first towns to be hit by the flood. Piru did have a hill for protection but the people closest to
the river did not have time to escape the waters. The flood hit the train tracks
between Castaic and Piru so hard that they were ripped
from the ground and twisted. In other places, the rails
were lifted up and just dropped onto totally different roadways. But more than train tracks
were destroyed in Piru. You can't really go to a
cemetery in this area or along the flood path without finding a memorial to the Saint Francis Dam victims or even more often entire
families buried in the cemetery. This is the Gottardi family, they were Italian immigrants. Joe and his wife Francis and
their six small children. Francis the wife and five of
the children died in the flood. There's this image of Joe, the father wandering his
ruined orchard, crying, searching for his family. Not yet aware that basically
all of them have been swept away by the flood. The body of one of his daughters,
Lenore was never found. Joe, the father did actually
end up buried here as well when he died in 1962. This is still a lot of heavy information. Oh good, the chicken is here
for a much needed lightening of the mood. Are you floating through
the night on a mattress with only a chicken for company? Getting bored at his lack of conversation? A big thanks to Audible
for sponsoring this video and helping to fill the void. You can go to www.audible.com/mortician or text mortician to 500, 500 to get one audio book
unlimited monthly Audible, original downloads and a 30-day
trial, all absolutely free. But what's this about a chicken? Sunday school teacher, Mrs.
Pearl Barnard was swept out of her house by the Saint
Francis Dam flood only to find herself riding the
floodwaters all night long, clinging to a mattress with only a small chicken for company. Both Pearl and the chicken survived. If you wanna learn even more about Pearl, her trusty chicken and the
hundreds of other tales of survival, water politics and tragedy, we suggest John Wilkman's "Floodpath", listening to this audio
book and driving through the Santa Clara River
Valley was like going back in time to the foundations of Los Angeles. The URL and SMS code for the offer are in the description below. As usual, any audio book
you get from Audible is yours forever and you
can go back and relisten at any time even if you
cancel your membership. Drive the flood path and take that California adventure deathlings. Of course I'm not advocating
for unsafe travel. So maybe just grab your closest chicken, hunker down on a mattress in
the safety of your own home and pop in your Air Pods. Thanks to Audible we're
able to make a contribution to the Greater Cedar
Rapids Community Foundation to aid in recovery from the
derecho storms that tore across Iowa and the Midwest. More on that at the end of this video. Unfortunately this is
exit chicken stage left. Castaic junction, where we are now, imagine back to what it
was like at the time, just fields of alfalfa and sheep. Now it's mostly known for Six Flags. (upbeat music) The flood hit the town
of Castaic around 1:00 AM and all but washed it away with waves between 55 and 75 feet high. After the waters passed through
Castaic, the town was quote, swept as bare as a pool table. These concrete structures
that I'm standing on formed the base of an automobile
bridge that spanned the Santa Clara River and was swept away in the flood that morning. You can really sense what it
would be like to just be right in the flood path right here at the point that it's dozens and dozens of feet high. At the time, it was also
a popular travel route with a well known cafe,
gas station and cabins where people could stay. A father and son, the
McIntyres see in the distance, lights flashing and some
rumbling and their thinking, is there a storm coming, what's happening? And then all of a sudden out
of some evil Fantasia-fantasy, the cabins lift up and
start moving toward them. The McIntyres are able to
grab on to a utility pole and hold on for dear life. But at this point, the flood
has barbed wire and structures and dead animals in it and
its points is 60 feet high. The father loses his grip on the pole and is ripped away to his death. As recently as the '90s, they were still finding remnants
and remains from the flood in this area. We're getting closer and
closer to where it all started. Powerhouse Two here behind me, was not the original Powerhouse Two. The first was one of the
first structural victims of the flood. A 140-foot wall of water came roaring down at just after midnight,
ripping away the steel and concrete structure. You have to remember that
dams didn't just hold water. They also created electricity. So all of these power
workers moved up here with their families and
created a community, including homes, a social club, a church. A 126 of the 129 people
that lived up here, died that morning. By 12:15 AM Powerhouse Two,
about a mile and a half down from the dam was
gone, wiped away entirely. Remember Ray Silvey at Powerhouse
One laughing with his pal, Lou Burns the electrician
down at Powerhouse Two? Silvey never did speak
to his friend again. In the aftermath of the flood,
Burns' body was recovered. His torso first and then
his legs months later and miles away. Those who lived near Powerhouse Two, near the base of the dam, remember hearing what
sounded like a thunder storm and feeling mist in the air. The precious few, who were
able to scramble up hillside to safety, turned around
to see just empty blackness where their homes once were. Finally we've reached the
place where it all began. The site of the Saint Francis Dam. I think the part is gonna be, is that it? I think that's it. Wow, this is so much more dam than I thought was gonna be here. That's incredible, okay
so these are the remains of the eastern and center part of the dam. And then up on top of this
hill is the west wing dike which is still relatively intact. So if you can imagine
all of this right here where we're standing was
the dam and then everything in this direction, this
huge reservoir was filled with 12.5 billion gallons of water. All of which drained out within an hour. Every picture that you see
of the Saint Francis Dam, you see that iconic step
ladder step structure down the front and this is it. These are the remains of
those steps coming out like teeth out of the earth. And somehow, visually this
is the most real thing to me about the ruins. It's visually recognizable as the dam. When the dam burst, huge pieces
of it shot out and rolled about a quarter to a
half a mile downstream. Forensic investigators used
all the different pieces, like pieces of a puzzle, putting them together to solve the crime. In the aftermath, the
immediate focus was on what caused such a massive failure? Later the city would try
to suggest that it was those vengeful Owens Valley bombers who just blew up the dam. But history has come down on
the idea that the main culprits were as they so often
are oversight and hubris. Throughout its brief existence,
the Saint Francis Dam was plagued by cracks that
were regularly filled. The cracks didn't really bother Mulholland and most dams will have some cracks. But the cracks continue to
appear in the foundation, the abutments and the wing dike, indicating that the dam
wasn't as structurally sound as Mulholland insisted it was. And remember Tony, the dam
keeper who was concerned about muddy water seeping
out on the western side, where the dam met the canyon? That indicated that the very
foundation of the dam itself was slowly getting washed away. Geological engineer, J.
David Rogers believes that a landslide triggered
the dam's failure, tearing up the foundation of
the dam and making it lean and then opening up all those cracks. And those thousand ton chunks
of dam that I showed you, blasted throughout San
Francisquito Canyon. The water forced its way into
an and under the structure and entire chunks of
the dam became buoyant, essentially getting lifted and
launched out into the canyon. The general consensus is that
if Mulholland had known more about concrete dams and
taking the time to learn more about the geology of
San Francisquito Canyon, he may have built a better dam. To his credit, Mulholland
took full responsibility for the failure of the dam and admitted that we must have overlooked something. And it did lead to better regulations like the California's Dam Safety Act and the Civil Engineers
Registration Act in 1929 which don't sound that impressive but they're bureaucratic, they're good. I'm imagining Mulholland
and Van Norman coming here on the morning of March 12th and going, oh yeah, the dam's fine. There's no water coming through. It's gonna be great. And then having to come back
here the very next morning and the dam is just gone. Reports say that on that morning, Mulholland was looking old and shaky. And that's probably because
he was starting to realize that it wasn't going
to be a rescue mission but more of a body recovery situation. Mulholland started getting
death threats at his house. And along the flood path, there was a town with a sign
that said, hang Mulholland. I don't think I should feel sorry for him. But on the other hand, it would be hard to unwittingly
kill several hundred people and then have all of your colleagues and your friends knit pick apart everything that you had done wrong. After the flood, what remained
at the dam site itself right there where I was
sitting was the tombstone, a massive central piece of the dam. It quickly became a
morbid tourist attraction with people coming from all
over the country to see it and photograph it. Cars lined the road into the canyon. Then an 18-year-old boy did
what 18-year-old boys seemed to do and scaled up the
tombstone got spooked, fell off and died at a nearby hospital. The dam had claimed yet another victim. The city decided to
dynamite the tombstone. So no one else would be hurt. And because they were embarrassed
to have it sitting there as a symbol of their failure. It's the end of a very long day. But we wanted to reach
this step-stone piece that looks perhaps most
like the original dam. Here in the canyon, the
rescue workers would look for vultures because vultures
would be an indication of where the dead bodies were. As you can imagine, recovering
bodies and human remains after the flood was a gargantuan task. The search, went around
the clock with the bodies and pieces of bodies being
found in every state imaginable. While many people did in fact drown, most it seemed were
killed some sort of blow or trauma while being
slammed about in the flood. One brigade found just the
fingers of a man sticking out of the sand. When they dug him out, they found that he died
standing straight up, entirely buried in silt. Brigades of volunteers
set out with shovels along the flood path, looking for bodies. Boy Scouts planted white flags
where they found the dead. Mexican American laborers from all over Southern California
joined the search efforts while authorities struggle to stay ahead of corpse robbers. Along the flood path, pyres were set of flame
in attempt to rid the area of animal carcasses and debris. However, some human remains may have been accidentally
burned in haste, making the number of deaths
that much harder to confirm. Body gatherers with
stretchers and sheets followed the white flags set by the Boy Scouts. The bodies they recovered
would then be loaded onto mule carts to be pulled
through the mud and debris to solid ground where a car
or motorcycle would carry them to a morgue. When corpses were found, they were quickly photographed,
identified if possible. And then given to the next of kin. While the city of Los
Angeles tried to ensure that every person received a
proper burial in a cemetery, many unclaimed dead were
buried in communal graves at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura and others approximately 20 were buried at the cemetery in Santa Paula. To this day, remains of Saint
Francis Dam flood victims are still being found
along the flood path. One of the big mysteries is that the damn keeper's fiance's body was found but the dam keeper himself,
Tony and his son, Coder their bodies were never found. Are they still buried here
somewhere in the canyon? Or were they blown out and
crushed never to be seen again like so many others? 600 deaths, possibly many more. If there's any lesson here, it's a lesson about our
obsession with progress. Why does a city need more resources? No matter what it does
to the rest of the state. When progress for the sake
of progress is fetishist, it becomes an end in and of itself. Even if there's no real
progression in the health, wealth or wellbeing of the people. The city did pay the victims of the flood for their obsession with
progress and their carelessness in causing the deaths. In the end, the city of
Los Angeles rapidly paid out $14 million in the hope
that the public would forget the disaster as soon as possible. And you could argue it worked. I've lived in LA for 12
years and had never heard about the Saint Francis Dam disaster. But now I have and now you have. Thank you again to Audible
for sponsoring this video. Thanks to your sponsorship, we were able to donate to the Greater Cedar Rapids
Community Foundation. Put the chicken away for this. On August 10th, a devastating storm called a derecho, ripped through Iowa in the
Midwest where my family's from. If you haven't heard about it, the "Iowa Starting Line" said, there are simply no words,
photos or videos sufficient to describe the full
extent of the carnage. Through their disaster recovery fund, the Greater Cedar Rapids
Community Foundation aims to help vulnerable populations that have been
disproportionately impacted, particularly the needs
of those not being met by existing nonprofit, local,
state and federal programs. You can support us by going to
audible.com/floating chicken, just kidding, audible.com/mortician or texting mortician to 500, 500. You can learn more about the Greater Cedar Rapids
Community Foundation below. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts, just like you. I know my bangs are not
perfect, 'cause it's so hot. They're just glued to my head. We're gonna see what we can do here. Chinatown, the site of
the Saint Francis Dam. The largest city along the
flood path in Santa Clara River, the largest city along the
flood path in the Santa Clara. (mumbling) The largest city in the Saint Francis Dam. Keep them moving early bird. For years, the cemetery was maintained by a local motorcycle
club, The Mischief Makers. Hi Kaitlin, tell us more. Oh, I'd love to tell you more. Another fun fact Rod
Stewart's hot legs was shot in historic Piru and now we have it and now we
have it and now we have it. Oh, good the chicken is
here for a much needed. Okay, actually I have
to go get the chicken. The chicken is not here unfortunately. What's the chickens best angle. He can take it, be honest
with the chicken, okay. Kaitlin, is that an ask-a-mortician mug you're drinking from? It sure is, I wasn't intending
to do a little promo for it but we have a new merge store. I'll put a link in the description. It's T-shirts, it's note
books, it's pouches. It's little mugs. Unfortunately this is the
end of the chicken's time on screen which was the
end of my time on screen. I go sit in the air conditioner. They gave him some money. Great, I don't think we need
to do too much apologizing for the state of California
and the city of Los Angeles to be, oh, now I'm just getting grouchy. Who's getting grouchy? It's me, right? Are we done, chicken? Say we're done. Oh praise to the chicken. I just pour water all over myself from my ask-a-mortician mug. (bright music)
(cackling chicken)
Very excited for this one. The St. Francis Dam disaster is one of my favourite bits of LA history and this is a great analysis of it.