On the Saturday afternoon of 14 December 1963, water burst through the foundation and earth dam of the Baldwin Hills Reservoir, a hilltop water storage facility located in metropolitan Los Angeles. The contents of the reservoir, some 250 million gallons of treated water that had filled the artificial, 20-acre clay- and asphalt-lined basin to a depth of 70 feet, emptied within hours onto the communities below the Baldwin Hills, inundated a square mile of residences with mud and debris, and damaged or destroyed 277 homes. Fortunately for those in the path of the flood wave, indications of imminent failure had been observed by a reservoir caretaker several hours before the final breach occurred: even so, police evacuation teams had barely sufficient time to clear the area. Consequences of the disaster were minimal compared with what would have occurred if no warning had been provided, but they included five lives lost, $12 million in property damage, and loss of the reservoir itself.
The remains of the Baldwin Hills Reservoir stand empty today, the northern rim of the bowllike structure having been gashed from crest to foundation by the escaping water. A linear crack issuing from the base of this gap can be traced across the asphalt floor of the reservoir. It reappears as a slight buckling of road pavement on the far side of the reservoir basin and thence becomes a faint, discontinuous break in the ground surface, which trails off south of the reservoir into the brush-covered and excavation-scarred terrain of the Inglewood oil field.
Excerpt from: SCIENCE, April 23, 1971, Vol. 172, pp. 333-344.
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