Fascinating reading about the early and present water wars in California. Part of this history was the basis of the movie Chinatown.

If you ever need a good example of how capitalism is bad, this is a good place to start... William Mulholland (and many others he worked with) was an odious man - it's a shame anything is named after him in LA...

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/3/7/california-water-wars-a-century-of-wrangling-over-los-angeless-water

#WaterCrisis #LosAngeles #Capitalism #StFrancisDam #Corruption

St. Francis Dam

“If there is an error of human judgment, I am the human.”
~ William Mulholland

The St. Francis Dam collapsed just before midnight on March 12, 1928, sending billions of gallons of water toward sleeping people downstream. 431 died in the second worst disaster in California history. The lessons learned have had a big impact on dam safety, and are taught to every engineer and geologist.

Learn about the disaster from Garry Hayes, geologist and educator, in his great blog:
https://geotripper.blogspot.com/2018/09/recalling-californias-second-worst.html

See scenes from the actual disaster in this very short video: The Story of the St. Francis Dam https://youtu.be/YWf6H3l4T4E

H/T to @elakdawalla for putting this bug in my ear.

#StFrancisDam #CaliforniasSecondWorstDisaster #Mulholland #geology #ScienceMastodon @geology