Rivers in the Desert

by Margaret L Davis

  Mulholland denied none of this. He stated that he had been at the dam site just one day before the break on one of his routine checks, but had noticed nothing unusual. He testified that he made a habit of visiting each of his nineteen dams once every ten to fourteen days. However, the following day, on the morning of the break, dam keeper Tony Harnischfeger had telephoned him at the Department to inform him of what appeared to be muddy water collecting near a new leak at the end of the west wing of the structure. (Twelve hours later, Harnischfeger and his six-year-old son would be the first to die when the dam burst. Their bodies were never recovered.) By 10:45 A.M. Mulholland and Van Norman were at the site to inspect the seepage. Mulholland testified that to his relief they found the water clear. The leak was spilling down the slope of a hill and running across an old construction road cut into the side of the hill. The soft dirt from the road made the leaking water appear to be muddy.

  Muddy water—that is, water containing silt or debris—leaking from any dam was a potentially dangerous situation, usually denoting earth or structural movement or both. But leakage in itself was not dangerous if it was clear. It was, of course true, declared Mulholland, that prior leaks were evident at the St. Francis and equally true that no dam, large or small, was immune from them.

  In January, the typical spring run-off reached the St. Francis Dam, and Mulholland prepared for it by allowing the reservoir to fill to capacity. The water reached an elevation of 1,934 feet, only three inches below the spillway; by March 7, no additional aqueduct water was diverted into the reservoir. Leaks that had been evident the year before had begun to discharge once again, and new leaks suddenly appeared on both abutments. During the first week of March, a substantial leak developed along the wing dike releasing roughly .60 cubic feet of water per second. Mulholland had ordered his men to install an eight-inch pipe underdrain in this location eastward along the base of the dike so that water would discharge along the dam’s western abutment.

  By March 12, the reservoir was filled to capacity, and water was lapping over the edge of the spillway by wind-driven waves. All of Mulholland’s downstream storage facilities were full and excess water from the aqueduct was released into the San Francisquito Canyon the morning of March 12 for the first time in nearly two years. Water surged from the aqueduct’s control gates at Drinkwater Canyon several thousand feet below Powerhouse Number Two. Residents who lived down-canyon and saw the water in the typically bone-dry creek bed stated later that they wondered whether something might be wrong with the dam.

  “Like all dams, there are little seeps here and there and I will say, as to that feature of it, of all the dams I have built and of all the dams I have ever seen, it was the driest for a massive dam of its size I ever saw in my life,” said Mulholland resolutely. “The water was clear … as clear as glass,” he added.

  Unfazed by Mulholland’s insistence on the leak’s benign character, Keyes, aided by Assistant District Attorney A. J. Dennison, pressed on with his customary prosecutor’s zeal, zeroing in on the issue of leakage, looking for the slightest sign of malfeasance and incompetency in every innocent word, hesitant pause, or random cough. For the most part, Mulholland’s answers were forthright. But the demeanor and brilliant repartee that had brought audiences to their feet in applause on the lecture circuit were subdued by the constant memory of the tragedy, and often during the long nine-day ordeal of the inquest, he found it difficult to concentrate on the questions put to him. With an enigmatic smile on his lips, he would sit staring silently at his hands until prodded by the questioner to answer.

  But Mulholland was clearly a man under siege, and as the inquiry progressed, he was bombarded by Keyes and jurors with minute questions of the rock and soil composition on which the dam was constructed, the grade mix of the concrete, the reasons why the San Francisquito site was selected, the time it took to construct the dam, the depth of the foundation into the subsoil and bedrock and methods of drilling and coring, the anchoring of the dam wings to the walls of the canyon, the various types of earthen and concrete dam construction, the pressure of water against the structure, the leak frequency, the process of draining off surplus water reserve, the method of siphoning water from the aqueduct into the dam, and Mulholland’s responsibility and manner of supervising the construction during the actual building phase and after. Charts, diagrams, and pre-break photographs of dam leakage were shown, and exhaustively analyzed. Rumors and statements of culpability were voiced and answers demanded.

  To Keyes’s accusation that Mulholland and the Department somehow knew of the impending disaster, no doubt caused by the leakage, and did nothing to save lives, Mulholland responded vehemently, shaking his head in denial of any prior knowledge or apprehension that the dam was about to give way.

  “No, no, no! I—we had no more idea of danger, no more reason to believe there might be a catastrophe than a babe in arms. Man alive, I would have sent a Paul Revere alarm ringing through every foot of that valley. I would have been the first, the very first, sir, to spread the alarm. I would have exerted every effort to get every man, woman, and child out of the path of those terrible waters,” he protested indignantly, adding that even if there had been many days prior notice of danger, it would have been impossible to eliminate the hazard. Opening all the flood gates would have reduced the water level only an inch or two a day. It would have taken months to empty the dam in safety.

  He also hotly branded as false the rumors that Santa Clara Valley residents and employees of the dam threatened to move away because of any present danger. “Absolutely no such rumors ever were spread through the valley,” he said. “They would have told me if they held any fears.”

  Asa Keyes stepped back briefly from his pungent cross-examination and shrewdly projected graphic motion pictures of the devastation on the bare white wall of the courtroom. The crude black-and-white film taken by a free-lance cameraman immediately after the catastrophe stunned the jurors with their first view of the ruins of the Santa Clara Valley. Weary men in heavy overcoats were dragging bodies to dry land, while others carried survivors on their backs. Corpses were strewn along the edge of the receding flood waters, animals were buried alive, there were huge oaks cleft above their roots, and automobiles washed downstream and half-buried in sand and mud. The pictures had their desired effect and the jurors recoiled in horror at the destruction. But it was Mulholland on whom the pictures had their greatest effect. Watching the scratchy gray scenes of death flickering on the wall, the gruesome scenes that he had been struggling so hard the past days to obliterate from his mind, he turned his head away, his sobs muffled by the steady whir of the film projector droning in the cigar-smoke-filled room.

  To Keyes’s chagrin, the vulnerable Mulholland, despite Keyes’s aggressive attempts to place blame on him for the disaster, had successfully warded off Keyes’s inferences and accusations of guilt. Now like a hungry predator lurking in high grass for wounded prey, Keyes chose the precipitous moment and instructed Assistant District Attorney Dennison to resume the attack.

  “Mr. Mulholland, did you know when you erected this dam that it was in a fault zone?” led off Dennison.

  “Of course. I’ve already testified to that,” replied Mulholland irritably.

  “Please tell us again.”

  “Well, you can scarcely find a square mile in this part of the country that is not faulty. It is very rumpled and twisted everywhere. I have dug underground, I suppose, seventy-five … one hundred miles of tunnels, and everywhere, there are faults and slips and crumples without exception. Look out of the window here at that bank, and you will see a formation that once was laid down flat by nature,” he said, gesturing to a small window and the weedy rise seen beyond. “It was formed at the bottom of deep water and is now tilted up at about thirty degrees. The same formations are found all over the country.”

  “Then, certainly, it is necessary to build these dam structures so they will stand considerable horizontal pressure?” said Dennison, loo
king over as Keyes nodded approvingly.

  “No, that is allowed for in the weight of the water,” replied Mulholland.

  “I mean in the fault zone?” quickly clarified Dennison.

  “The foundation was not buried that deep in the ground. I have told you that before,” retorted Mulholland testily.

  “But it did rest on earth, did it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was anchored into the hills on each side?”

  “Yes, of course. It was subject to some stress there but nobody had ever been able to compute those stresses.”

  “And if it was in a fault zone—”

  “They are all in a fault zone. The City of San Francisco reservoir is in a fault zone. The Haiwee Reservoir that supplies this town lies in a fault,” he replied, with voice raised in exasperation.

  “And engineers have to build them so as to make them fault-proof, don’t they?” continued Dennison, eliciting a furtive OK sign from his beaming boss.

  “They try to,” Mulholland replied.

  “And they do it?”

  Still staring at his hands, Mulholland replied plaintively, “I have built nineteen dams and they are all fault-proof. I have built more than any other engineer who has testified here. And I have been consulted for at least that many more.”

  I see. And all of them fault-proof? That’s interesting,” retorted Dennison sarcastically, and gave way to Keyes, eagerly stepping forward to take over the questioning.

  “You have been an engineer, have you not, for thirty years,” began Keyes with wide-eyed innocence.

  “Fifty,” corrected Mulholland.

  “Well, that’s a long time, fifty years. A long time. And, as you have said, you have erected a great many dams in that time?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Let me ask you then, as an engineer for fifty years and a builder of many dams, and an expert in faults, this fact: if water was leaking between the concrete dam foundation and the rock supporting it or between the wings of the dam and the rock conglomerate of the hills they were anchored into, would there not be a natural erosion and an absolute certainty that the dam would go out as it did?” Keyes asked, smugly confident.

  “No. It might not go out at all. Just an ordinary crack in the material will cause it to respond to erosion, but wouldn’t necessarily affect it severely,” replied Mulholland defiantly.

  “But if water in those areas was pouring sufficiently or cutting sufficiently, as persons in this room are prepared to attest, it would effect erosion and cause the dam to break absolutely, am I right?”

  “That’s correct … if it was sufficient. But I have told you it was not.… The water was clear.”

  “I see.… Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that, but you would, of course, being an engineer for fifty years, and all. You certainly couldn’t make a mistake about that, could you?”

  Affronted, Mulholland glared, responding with: “I am here to give you all I know, and I swear to God that my oath is binding on me as—”

  Keyes waved a dismissive hand in the air, bluntly interrupting with: “We are all aware of the nature of oaths here, Mr. Mulholland. It’s the nature of dams we want to know about.”

  Then, with a mocking look to the jurors, Keyes added: “Tell us, if the leakage didn’t cause the break, or a fault didn’t cause it, have you any explanation as to the real cause of the failure of this dam? Certainly it didn’t happen all on its own, or did it?”

  Suddenly, without waiting for reply, Keyes grimaced and looked away in anger, only the anger was directed at himself. Asked for the sake of sarcasm and to solicit laughter, the grandstanding Keyes regretted the question the instant it came out of his mouth. Unwittingly, stupidly, he had just asked the very same question that he cautioned Dennison only hours before not to put to Mulholland under any circumstances. Such a question, Keyes knew, would lead the prosecution into the perilous territory it had wished to avoid at all costs.

  If the question caused Keyes to want to bite his tongue in regret, it prompted Van Norman, the Department of Water and Power Commissioners, and the whole assembled room to eagerly lean forward in their seats in anticipation. The room was as quiet as death as they waited for Mulholland’s expected reply.

  Once again Mulholland glanced down at his hands. Pausing for what Van Norman thought was an eternity, he finally looked up and without taking his eyes off the small window, replied guardedly, almost reluctantly, as if wrestling with a great weighty decision.

  “I have no explanation that could be called an explanation, but I have a suspicion … I don’t want to divulge it even … It is a very serious thing to make a charge—to me it is a sacred thing to make a charge, even of the remotest implication…”

  At the word “charge,” Keyes immediately knew he had in fact entered that perilous territory, and the lofty confidence that he was so ably demonstrating suddenly was pervaded by a sense of panic which he quickly struggled to control.

  Now, as the obviously hesitant Mulholland sat before him in the witness chair of the inquiry room, Keyes’s previously successful struggle to suppress the mention of dynamite was in danger of blowing up in his face, and ironically, as he very well knew, he had lit the fuse himself. Wiping the tiny beads of sweat that had appeared on his brow with a silk monogrammed handkerchief, the ever resourceful Keyes moved to correct his error. “Is that all you have to offer, a bare suspicion, Mr. Mulholland? Well, well, if it’s only a suspicion it can’t amount to anything, can it? I must remind you, this is a very important matter to everybody here,” he chided as if correcting a small child.

  Mulholland sighed heavily. “Yes sir. And it is most important to me. Human beings are dead.”

  “Of course, of course. But let us continue,” replied Keyes dismissively. “Let me now ask a question from an engineering standpoint: was it not an utter impossibility to build the dam with any factor of safety in the manner in which it was constructed?”

  “An impossibility?”

  “Yes. To build it with any factor of safety—was it immune from failure?”

  “If I thought that was the case I would not have built it.”

  “A great many men make mistakes and everybody is liable to make a mistake. All of us here in this room certainly understand that, Colonel Mulholland,” Keyes said, patronizing Mulholland with a sweeping gesture to the audience. “But isn’t it a fact, established by the best minds of engineering, that it would be an utter impossibility to build a dam there with any factor of safety?”

  “I would not have built it if I thought that,” repeated Mulholland, his attention drifting again to the window.

  “That’s what you’d say then, but what would you say if you had to do it over again—would you build that dam in the same manner in which it was constructed?” asked Keyes impatiently.

  “No, I must be frank and say that now I would not.”

  Keyes took an audible breath, and sensing victory, pressed on. “And why wouldn’t you build it there again, Colonel—because of these leakage factors we’ve just spoken of, correct? Isn’t that it?”

  “It failed, that’s why,” replied Mulholland. “There was a hoodoo on it.…”

  “Hoodoo? Hoodoo?” repeated Keyes. Turning to the jurors he shrugged, opening his palms in a gesture of incredulity, then faced Mulholland again. “Tell us more about this ‘hoodoo,’ Colonel.”

  “Well, it was in a vulnerable spot. The break has all the appearances of a hoodoo.”

  “You don’t mean it’s hoodooed in that the tragedy occurred on the thirteenth of March, do you?” asked Keyes now shooting an incredulous took to the jurors.

  “Well, I hadn’t thought of that,” mused Mulholland, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Now that’s as good a theory as we’ll ever hear here,” smirked Keyes to a ripple of laughter.

  There is no evidence that District Attorney Keyes was a religious man, but his associates knew he had reason enough to get down on his hands and knees and
give thanks to the patron saint of public prosecutors. Just minutes earlier he had been in danger of losing the case of a lifetime. Then, as miracles often do, one came inexplicably to his rescue in the form of a hoodoo backed by a recess for lunch.

  WITHIN HOURS of the dam’s failure, behind the closed doors of the Department of Water and Power and at City Hall, there had been a greater and deeper panic than that inflicting Asa Keyes as he stood pondering his next theatrical maneuver. The crisis was no laughing matter; the Department and Mulholland believed the dam had been sabotaged. Early confidential memos detailing Department response in the event of terrorism were abruptly put into force. All roads in the vicinity of the aqueduct and city reservoirs were ordered closed, floodlights were utilized at siphons, guards were posted, and automobile patrols dispatched. Mulholland ordered five hundred high-powered rifles delivered to dam keepers and guards throughout the Los Angeles water system. At Mulholland Dam above the Hollywood Hills, armed guards paced the reservoir perimeter twenty-four hours a day. Mayor George Cryer and other city officials feared for the safety of the city. The governor’s office was notified, and appeals for federal assistance should it be needed were sent.

  The next day, newspapers printed jittery accounts of “startling new evidence” suggesting that the St. Francis had been dynamited, confirming the worst fears of water officials. The evidence consisted of a newly frayed rope found dangling from a bush on a cliff above the St. Francis, discovered by Department engineers and believed to be identical in thickness and texture to a rope found in an aqueduct bombing of 1927. Department officials speculated that the rope was used to lower boxes of dynamite into the dam’s foundation walls. And in Hollywood, an anonymous man discovered a crude discarded map of the St. Francis Dam the day after it burst. The map contained handwriting allegedly identical to that of one of the insurgents involved in the dynamiting of the No Name Canyon Siphon. The rope and map were delivered to Asa Keyes’s office to be introduced as evidence at the Coroner’s Inquest.