Considering the history of the St Francis Dam in California, one can be confused as to why it failed or collapsed. One can argue that it is due to the water level of the reservoir that it is built on, or one can argue that it is due to the fault activity of the land and the slope.
Los Angeles dynamited and buried the surviving center section
During the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the St Francis Dam was an important part of the system. In fact, the dam was the biggest in the country. It held 12.4 billion gallons of water and had the potential to store enough water to supply 500,000 households for a year.
The dam was built in the San Francisquito Canyon of the Sierra Pelona Mountains, which is about 10 miles north of Santa Clarita. It was constructed without the usual fanfare.
The dam was the brainchild of William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer. He was the General Manager of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply. Mulholland’s initial study of the canyon showed that the site was a suitable place to build a dam.
Slope movement and fault activity
During the night of March 12-13, 1928, the St Francis Dam in California collapsed catastrophically. Approximately 450 people died, and over 600 more were missing. It was the worst civil engineering failure of the 20th century. It also was the largest arch-supported dam in the world. It was located in the San Francisquito Canyon of the Sierra Pelona Mountains about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It had been built to provide a large regulating reservoir for the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. It was completed in May 1926.
The dam was built on an ancient landslide. The reservoir was expected to hold 12 billion gallons of water. It was expected to rise steadily until early February 1928. When the reservoir began to rise, water permeated the eastern abutment. It lubricated the rock and began to destabilize it.
Covid-19’s quasi-natural status has provided fertile ground for politically convenient conspiracy theories
Until the last few weeks, it seemed that the Covid-19 virus was a natural virus. Then, it was announced that the virus’s genome sequence revealed a new structure that resembled a laboratory virus, indicating that the virus might not have come from nature. It was then a matter of debate among virologists whether the virus had been produced in a lab or simply escaped from a lab.
After the initial announcement, a group of four virologists sent an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Those four virologists unanimously thought the virus had been produced in a laboratory.
The group then prepared an article for Nature Medicine, stating that the virus is not a laboratory-created construct. Despite the article’s positive conclusion, the mainstream press was reluctant to investigate the possibility that the virus had been made in a lab.
Soledad Luna was at home asleep when the dam collapsed
Described by some as the second deadliest disaster in California history, the 1928 collapse of the St Francis Dam wiped out hundreds of lives and millions of dollars in property. It displaced thousands of people, wiped out highway bridges and power stations, and left a trail of mangled bodies on the sand and on the banks of the Santa Clara River.
What’s the story behind the largest dam in the country? How did the dam fail and how did the disaster damage the reputation of its dam keeper?
A little girl named Soledad was at home asleep when the dam collapsed. She was expected to take care of her 18-month-old sister Hortense. Her mother, Irene, and her brothers, Magdaleno and Sisto, lived in a bungalow between Ventura and Oxnard.
Flooding after the dam collapsed
During the St Francis Dam disaster in California, hundreds of people were killed and thousands of acres of land were swept away. The flood waters swept over the Santa Clara River Valley, rushing to the Pacific Ocean 54 miles away.
The disaster is considered one of the most tragic dam failures in American history. It killed hundreds of people, left thousands of acres of land leveled, and sent 12 billion gallons of water to the ocean.
The cause of the disaster was not immediately known to geologists. However, many people were not convinced that the dam was safe. Workers at Powerhouse #2 were not convinced.
As the flood swept through the valley, many workers tried to find survivors. But many unclaimed bodies were left buried in a mass grave in Ventura County.
