St. Francis Dam - Aftermath

Aftermath

The center section of the dam, later nicknamed "The Tombstone", remained standing. The rest of the dam broke into numerous smaller and several large pieces, most of which were washed downstream. The largest piece, weighing 10,000 tons, was found about three-quarters of a mile (1200m) below the damsite.

A few months after the collapse 18-year-old Lercy Parker fell to his death from the standing section after his friend had thrown a dead rattlesnake at him as a joke. In May, 1929, the upright section was toppled with dynamite and the remaining blocks were demolished with bulldozers and jackhammers to discourage sightseers and souvenir hunters from exploring the ruins. The wing dike, which had also remained intact, was used by Los Angeles firemen to gain experience in using explosives on building structures. The St. Francis Dam was not rebuilt, though Bouquet Reservoir in nearby Bouquet Canyon and Castaic Dam in the town of Castaic were subsequently built in 1934 and 1973, respectively, as replacements for the St. Francis Dam.

To this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown. The official death toll in August 1928 was 385, but the remains of victims continued to be discovered every few years through the mid-1950s. Many victims were swept out to sea when the flood reached the Pacific Ocean and were never recovered while others were washed ashore, some as far south as the Mexican border. The remains of another victim were found deep underground near Newhall in 1992, and the current death toll is estimated to be more than 600 victims (excluding the itinerant farm workers camped in San Francisquito Canyon, the exact number of which will never be known).

At the Coroner's Inquest, the leak that Tony Harnischfeger had spotted was cited as evidence that the dam was leaking on the day of the break and that both the Bureau of Water Works and Supply and Mulholland were aware of it. Mulholland told the jury he had been at the dam not only on the day of the break, due to the dam keepers call, but on the day before, as well, on a routine inspection. He testified that he had observed nothing of concern on either day, nor any dangerous conditions. Mulholland further testified that leaks in dams, especially of the type and size of the St. Francis, were common. During the Inquest Mulholland was heard to say, "the only people I envy in this whole thing are the dead". As the Inquest was nearing a close, he said, "Don't blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human, and I won't try to fasten it on anyone else."

The failure of the dam is now believed to have begun when the eastern abutment of the dam gave way due to a landslide. The material on which the eastern abutment of the dam had been built was itself part of an ancient landslide, but this would have been impossible for almost any geologists of the 1920s to detect. Indeed, two of the world's leading geologists at the time, John C. Branner of Stanford University and Carl E. Grunsky, had found no fault with the San Francisquito rock. Therefore, the jury determined responsibility for the disaster lay with the governmental organizations which oversaw the dam's construction and the dam's designer and engineer, Mulholland, but cleared Mulholland of any charges, since neither he nor anyone else at the time could have known of the instability of the rock formations on which the dam was built. The hearings also recommended that "the construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the sole judgment of one man, no matter how eminent."

Mulholland retired from the Bureau of Water Works and Supply in March of 1929. His assistant, Harvey Van Norman, succeeded him as chief engineer and general manager. Mulholland was retained as a consultant with an office and received a salary of $500.00 a month. In later years, he retreated into a life of self-imposed semi isolation. He died in 1935, at the age of 79.

In response to the St. Francis Dam disaster, California Legislature created a dam safety program in 1929 and the California Department of Water Resources was created in 1956 by Governor Goodwin Knight following severe flooding across Northern California in 1955, combining the Division of Water Resources of the Department of Public Works with the State Engineer's Office, the Water Project Authority, and the State Water Resources Board.