When the St. Francis Dam burst 88 years ago, 12.4 billion gallons of water rose 140 feet, surging 54 miles to the Pacific Ocean.

Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s St. Francis Dam collapsed, inundating the canyon below with some 12 billion gallons of water.

In March 1928, the St. Francis Dam disaster sent water on a rampage in Southern California More than 450 people were killed in the March 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse, ...

Today in Santa Clarita history, the city of Los Angeles made the first payment on a death and disability claim arising from the St. Francis Dam disaster.

The St. Francis Dam collapsed because the location was unsuitable, said Jon Wilkman, author of the book “Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of the 20th Century America and the Making of ...

The March 12, 1928, collapse of the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles is, in terms of loss of life, the second-greatest disaster in California history.

The St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, was intended to serve as a backup supply of water in case the flow of water from the Owens Valley was interrupted.

This brought the dam to a capacity of 38,000 acre-feet—about 2,400,000 bathtubs of water. On March 12, 1928, St. Francis was filled to capacity for the first time.

A memorial next to San Francisquito Power Plant No. 2 on San Francisquito Road is dedicated to the more than 450 victims of the March 12, 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster.

"I believe rescuing the memory of the St. Francis Dam disaster is important for a full appreciation of the sometimes-hidden history of Los Angeles and Southern California," he said, "but just as ...

There are no signs, no memorials, nor even any recognizable ruins that mark the location where, on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam suddenly and catastrophically collapsed.