March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam Disaster

March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam fails in San Francisquito Canyon in Los Angeles County, California. Built in 1926 and standing 205 feet high, its failure killed at least 431 people. It remains the 3rd-worst disaster in California history, behind the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the Great Flood of 1862 that hit Sacramento and the State's Central Valley.

Five people later said in interviews for the investigation that they had seen the dam within an hour of the disaster, and didn't notice anything wrong. Ace Hopewell, a carpenter at the dam's Powerhouse No. 1, was leaving work on his motorcycle, about 10 minutes before midnight, and was passing Powerhouse No. 2, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. But about a mile and a half upstream, loud enough to be heard over his cycle's engine, he heard what sounded like a landslide. He stopped, heard the sound stop, presumed whatever was wrong was over, and went back on his way.

At the Bureau of Power and Light, a sharp voltage drop was seen at 11:57:30 PM. A transformer at Southern California Edison's Saugus substation exploded, causing the dam to break, and pour 12.4 billion gallons of water down San Francisquito Canyon and an average speed of 18 miles per hour. Powerhouse No. 2 was destroyed. Of the 67 workmen who lived nearby 64 died, along with their families. A 10,000-ton piece of the dam was found three-quarters of a mile below the dam site. Within 70 minutes, the reservoir resulting from the dam's construction was empty.

Just 12 hours before the dam burst, William Mulholland, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, had inspected the Dam and declared it safe. The disaster forced his resignation. In spite of this, a major thoroughfare in Los Angeles is still named Mulholland Drive.

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March 12, 1928 was a Monday. Edward Albee, the playwright whose works including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was born on this day.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. One game was played in the NHL: The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-1 at the Chicago Coliseum. The Pirates moved 2 years later, becoming the Philadelphia Quakers, and folded after 1 more season.