#StFrancisDam

2025-03-09

Fascinating reading about the early and present water wars in California. Part of this history was the basis of the movie Chinatown.

If you ever need a good example of how capitalism is bad, this is a good place to start... William Mulholland (and many others he worked with) was an odious man - it's a shame anything is named after him in LA...

aljazeera.com/features/2025/3/

#WaterCrisis #LosAngeles #Capitalism #StFrancisDam #Corruption

Vicky Veritasvickyveritas@c.im
2022-12-29

St. Francis Dam

“If there is an error of human judgment, I am the human.”
~ William Mulholland

The St. Francis Dam collapsed just before midnight on March 12, 1928, sending billions of gallons of water toward sleeping people downstream. 431 died in the second worst disaster in California history. The lessons learned have had a big impact on dam safety, and are taught to every engineer and geologist.

Learn about the disaster from Garry Hayes, geologist and educator, in his great blog:
geotripper.blogspot.com/2018/0

See scenes from the actual disaster in this very short video: The Story of the St. Francis Dam youtu.be/YWf6H3l4T4E

H/T to @elakdawalla for putting this bug in my ear.

#StFrancisDam #CaliforniasSecondWorstDisaster #Mulholland #geology #ScienceMastodon @geology

All that is left of the Mulholland Dam after the deadly collapse led to the death of 400 people. A lone span of the Dam is all that remains and stands like a tombstone surrounded by debris and the washed out river below.Cross-section of the St Francis Dam outlining the problems with the site chosen for the dam and that led to the collapse.The St. Francis Dam as it looked before the collapse.

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