Minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed, sending more than 12 billion gallons of water surging through California's Santa Clara Valley and killing some 400 people, causing the greatest civil engineering disaster in twentieth-century American history. This volume gives an account of St. Francis Dam came disaster.
Focusing on the St. Francis Dam Disaster of March 1928, this book delves into the intertwining social, political, and technological factors that led to this catastrophic event, marking it as the worst civil engineering disaster in 20th-century America. The sudden collapse of the dam, designed by engineer William Mulholland, resulted in the tragic loss of around 400 lives and unleashed over 12 billion gallons of water into the Santa Clara River Valley, highlighting the profound impact of engineering failures on communities.