I had read "Man Made Disaster" in 1964 in junior high school and arranged to have my brother drive us up to the dam site. It has changed a good bit over the past 57 years. First, we drove up the old road, and it was clear where the dam was because the terrain to the north of the site was lush, green and wooded. The area below was still scoured and nearly barren. It had been only 36 years since the collapse. The wing wall was fairly intact, and the steps of the "tombstone" were more visible. We brought back a chunk of concrete from one of the downstream sections. We also talked our way into Powerplant # 2 during our 1964 trip. We saw the transformer that was wrenched out of the basement and tossed down the canyon, fished out, welded back together and re-used. I went back in the late 1980s. I hooked up with a Boy Scout troop and their scoutmasters, one who had a copy of the book. It was interesting to be among young men who were my age when I first saw the dam. It was clear that the wing wall had been demolished with explosives, not natural weathering. We went together to San Francisquito Powerplant # 1 and had a fascinating tour. The Pelton Wheel generators still had their "50 Hz buckets", designed to generate 50-cycle power that ran Los Angeles until the early 1950s. I have visited the ruins of the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, PA, and, at the end of the summer, I am going on a military history tour in Belgium and France, then flying to Italy to see the Vajont Dam, the site of the October, 1963 landslide that sent a 750' tsunami down a narrower canyon, killing over 3,000 people. I have long been haunted about the St. Francis Dam. I will return sometime, in the next few years.

I live about A mile from here, Hiked there about 2 weeks ago.

I have been to that area many times, the last time during a rain storm. I don't know to what degree this may have been related, but when I pulled my 4WD truck off the road to hike into the area, the surface of the roadside was so incredibly slick and slimey that it was all I could do to keep my truck from sliding over a 50 foot embankment. If the same thing happened underneath that damn, it was doomed the moment the idea for it was conceived.

Whos here from school?

You could voice act the intro and easily call it a movie.