Baldwin Hills Dam disaster

This article is about the former reservoir in Baldwin Hills. For the lake in Arcadia, see Baldwin Lake (Los Angeles County, California).

34°00′30″N 118°21′49″W / 34.0082°N 118.3636°W / 34.0082; -118.3636

Baldwin Hills Reservoir after 1963 failure, view south. The gash through the dam corresponds to the alignment of a fault.

The Baldwin Hills Dam disaster occurred on December 14, 1963 (60 years ago) (1963-12-14) in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of South Los Angeles, when the dam containing the Baldwin Hills Reservoir suffered a catastrophic failure and flooded the residential neighborhoods surrounding it.

It began with signs of lining failure, followed by increasingly serious leakage through the dam at its east abutment. After three hours, the dam breached, and "it took only 77 minutes for all the water to pour out into Cloverdale Avenue, La Brea Avenue, La Cienega and Jefferson Boulevard."[1] The collapse resulted in a release of 290 million US gallons (1,100,000 m3),[2] causing five deaths[3] and the destruction of 277 homes. Damage totaled $12 million and the disaster caused a water shortage for 500,000 people.[4] Some 16,000 people lived in the flooded area.[5] Vigorous rescue efforts averted a greater loss of life.[citation needed]

The reservoir was constructed on a low hilltop between 1947 (77 years ago) (1947) and 1951 (73 years ago) (1951) by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, directly on an active fault line, which was subsidiary to the well-known nearby Newport–Inglewood Fault. The underlying geologic strata were considered unstable for a reservoir, and the design called for a compacted soil lining meant to prevent seepage into the foundation. The fault lines were considered during planning, but were deemed by some, although not all, of the engineers and geologists involved as not significant.[6]

The former reservoir is now part of the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. A plaque was placed at the site on the 50th anniversary of the disaster in 2013.[1]

  1. ^ a b "Remembering the Baldwin Hills Dam Rupture « Community Development". Archived from the original on 2022-09-14. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
  2. ^ "New Park Will Ease Squeeze in Inglewood". Los Angeles Times. 1976-05-06. p. CS1.
  3. ^ "Baldwin Hills Dam (California, 1963) Case Study ASDSO Lessons Learned". damfailures.org. Archived from the original on 2020-08-14. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  4. ^ Pitt, Leonard; Pitt, Dale (1997). Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20274-0.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Scott 1987