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The Day the Dam Burst
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dazed wakefulness, yelling at them to run of 20 blocks of houses rise like oorks and
for the hills. Some escaped, but 80 didn't bob to nev.r locations.
make it. Among them was the watchman, It was all over befo1·e dawn. The first of
whose half-buried body was found later 3,000 rescue workers reached the desolated
in the muck close to camp. valley well ahead of sunrise. Among them
The little city of Santa Paula, 38 miles were J. R. Deason and fellow members of
below the burst dam, was roused in time the Emergency Road Service Dept. of the
to save most of its inhabitants. Two tele- Automobile Club of Southern California.
phone operators at Newhall, up the valley, Deason, now a supervisor in his depart-
spent the night spreading the alarm fast ment, recently recalled the eeriness of that
and far. One of them got through to the morning. The valley was dark except for
Santa Paula police at two a.m. The flood bobbing lanterns moving fitfully in the
struck the town an hour and 10 minutes fields, and silent except for the howling of
later. a dog or two. It was difficult to believe that
The police had church a-nd fire bells a tremendous disaster had taken place.
rung, and rode through the city with sirens Search pmties were quietly and quickly
wailing. They concentrated on warning the organized to look for survivors.
district nearest the river, a largely Mexican Deason will never forget how the flood
quarter. Its people were told to get to wave had swept victims over wire fences
Teague Heights as fast as they could, but and then, as it receded, trapped them in
some, perhaps because they only dimly un- the mesh, like fish in a net. And he still
derstood English, ignored the warning and remembers freak discoveries: the bodies of
stayed where they were-to drown. six mountain lions-"big ones, too" -and an
\Vhen the Rood wave, now reduced to a old-fashioned office safe upright in a
height of 25 feet, crashed into the darkened meadow, its sides scoured bright by the
town, 1,500 shivering refugees were watch- flood's burden of gravel.
ing from the safety of the heights. Under By the morning of March 14, the entire
the starhght, they saw the vague shapes nation knew what had happened. Its at-
CONTINUED