Yesterday marked the 90th anniversary of the 1928 St. Francis Dam Disaster, the second greatest disaster in California history. 400 lives, and possibly more were lost. At tonight's Santa Clarita Council Meeting, the following special video was presented. #SantaClaritaValley #SantaClarita #StFrancisDam #StFrancisDamDisaster | City of Santa Clarita Government

The St Francis Dam disaster of 1928 is considered the worst American civil engineering disaster of the 20th century William Mulholland, of which Mulholland Drive is named after, hastily oversaw the project. He ignored geologists warnings to not build the dam due to unstable foundations and went a step further by opting to use cheaper materials to get the job done quicker. Why? Because LA needed more water and fast. But this dam construction came right after building the first ever long distance

Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed, sending billions of gallons of water toward sleeping people downstream. Watch FLOOD IN THE DESERT Tue May 3 at 9/8c on American Experience | PBS → pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/flood-desert | American Experience | PBS

#MOTW The design and construction of the St. Francis Dam was executed solely by the Los Angeles Bureau of Waterworks & Supply under the supervision of the organization’s chief engineer William Mulholland. The 1928 failure of the dam which resulted in the deaths of over 400 civilians was attributed to a series of human errors and poor engineering judgment. Due to the tremendous loss of life and property damage estimated to be $7 million, some consider the failure of the St. Francis Dam to be the

90 years ago today the St. Francis Dam collapsed - the second-deadliest disaster in California history. | Newsweek

Close to midnight in 1928, the St. Francis dam near Los Angeles suddenly collapsed —the largest man-made disaster in California history. Fifty years later, screenwriter Robert Towne would use its details and characters as the foundation for “Chinatown”, making Jack Nicholson and his cigarette one of Hollywoods biggest stars. Two decades after that, Dan Akroyd ushered me and few others into a secret back room at his L.A. House of Blues where I shared a different sort of cigarette with Jack Nichol