num_pages: 336
description: Just before midnight on March 12 1928 the St. Francis Dam a twenty-story-high concrete structure just fifty miles north of Los Angeles suddenly collapsed releasing a devastating flood that roared fifty-four miles to the Pacific Ocean destroying everything in its path. It was a horrific catastrophe yet one which today is virtually forgotten.With research gathered over more than two decades award-winning writer and filmmaker Jon Wilkman revisits the deluge that claimed nearly five hundred lives. A key figure is William Mulholland the self-taught engineer who created an unprecedented water system allowing Los Angeles to become America's second-largest city and who was also responsible for the design and construction of the St. Francis Dam.Driven by eyewitness accounts and combining urban history with a life-and-death drama and a technological detective story Floodpath grippingly reanimates the reality behind L.A. noir fictions such as the classic film Chinatown . In an era of climate change increasing demand on water resources and a neglected American infrastructure the tragedy of the St. Francis Dam has never been more relevant.
language: English
title: Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th-Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles
publisher: Bloomsbury Press