450 KILLED ON THAT AWFUL MARCH NIGHT; SURVIVORS RECALL DAM CATASTROPHE OF 1928.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Seventy years ago today, 12 billion gallons of drinking water were safely harnessed behind 4-year-old walls of concrete nearly 200 feet high in remote San Francisquito Canyon. Then, in the last two minutes of that Monday night in 1928, the water that represented life, growth and prosperity to arid and thirsty Los Angeles exploded through St. Francis Dam and thundered into the valley below, slashing a ferocious path of destruction like an angel of death.

When dawn broke that Tuesday morning, those beyond harm's reach awoke to the carnage and decimation that the midnight dam burst unleashed upon the Santa Clarita Valley and the Ventura County farming communities of neighboring Piru, Fillmore and Santa Paula.

`` `Don't stop to dress! Wake up everybody!' '' Ventura resident Doris Navarro Jackson remembers her father yelling. Her dad realized there was trouble looming when he looked out into the moonlit night.

``We saw something silvery coming toward us,'' Jackson said. ``It was the water from the dam.''

In the end, an estimated 450 people had perished. An accurate count was impossible because the area's population was largely migrant workers who toiled on ranches and at a utility camp. Also, scores of bodies washed out to sea.

Although the failure of the St. Francis Dam remains California's second-deadliest natural disaster ever - behind only the toll of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fire - it has largely slipped into historical oblivion. Outside the communities ravaged by the floodwaters, the general public has little knowledge of the tragic events of that horrifying night.

Many who lived through the catastrophe still reside locally, with memories still vivid despite the passage of seven decades.

Jackson was a teen-ager when she, her father and seven siblings fled in terror from their home in the farming community of Bardsdale, just south of Fillmore. The mist and spray generated by the approaching deluge, and the rustling sound it created, awakened her older sister Carmen about 1 a.m.

The family, ranging in age from her 3-year-old brother to her dad, scrambled across a neighboring walnut orchard. ``We were looking back (at the coming flood) and fell in an irrigation ditch, which was over 6 feet deep,'' Jackson recalled. ``We had the hardest time getting out of there, because none of us were 6 feet tall.''

The eight of them - ``screaming and hollering and crying'' - found a safe haven at a ranch house. ``The owner came out (with) a lantern, and he said: `What's the matter? What's going on?' '' Jackson said.

Her father could only offer a guess. ``He said `I think it's the ocean' because we'd never heard of a dam,'' Jackson said.

The rancher's daughter drove off to investigate. ``After a while, she came back and said the dam broke,'' Jackson said. ``The next day my brothers . . . and my father went out looking for bodies.''

The floodwaters had left her large family homeless, carrying off their truck and farm animals.

``Everything was swept away. Nothing was left there,'' Jackson said. ``You couldn't even tell that anybody lived there. Where our ranch was, the river was running through there.''

Ventura resident Bob Daries, 77, remembers being rushed out of bed in the middle of the night when the whistles at the oil fields in Santa Paula tooted in loud, short bursts, signaling an emergency.

``All the sirens and whistles - everything was blowing. That never happened,'' he said. ``Everybody headed for high ground. I remember we were up all night. I was in my BVDs and wrapped up in my blanket.''

Daries said a local law enforcement officer was a hero that night. ``Thornton Edwards was going up and down the street on his motorcycle, (saying): `Get out of town! The dam has busted!' '' he said.

In the aftermath, Daries' father drove the family to Castaic to see the devastation. ``I remember the railroad tracks - the water was so powerful that the tracks were bent and curled,'' he said.

Lucille Moore Sparkman was 9 at the time, living on a 12-acre citrus ranch on Sycamore Road, about a mile north of the Santa Clara River. She slept through the disaster, completely unaware of the flood until the next morning.

``We didn't know anything had happened. We were walking to school and we could see that the river was spread out all over creation,'' Sparkman recalled. ``We could tell something was very wrong.''

The destruction was widespread. ``There were homes just piled up against each other,'' she said.

Her brother's landlady survived a harrowing ordeal, Sparkman remembered.

``Her little house washed away, and she rode the rooftop clear the way to (the farming community of) Saticoy,'' she said. ``The house ran into the riverbank and she was able to get off. I would say it was a minimum of five miles, bouncing up and down all the way.''

A current exhibit at the Santa Paula Union Oil Museum, recently extended through May 3, aims to remind Southern Californians of this sad chapter in local history. ``Dam Break: Heroes and Survivors'' chronicles through vintage photographs and newspaper clippings the devastation that the raging torrent wreaked during its 50-mile cascade to the Pacific Ocean.

Afterward, William Mulholland, chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, accepted blame for the dam's failure. The DWP operated the dam in San Francisquito Canyon north of Saugus.

In an overdue effort to honor a forgotten episode in Southern California's formative years, historical societies in cities along the flood's path have begun planning memorials to the St. Francis Dam collapse, highlighting the victims left in its wake and those who distinguished themselves in the midst of the disaster.

CAPTION(S):

6 photos, map

PHOTO (1-- ran in Valley, Simi, SAC, and Conejo Editions only) Survivors of the St. Francis Dam collapse carry the body of a victim from the receding floodwaters in this news photo from the March 1928 disaster taken by the famous Watson Brothers.

Delmar Watson

(2 -- ran in Valley edition only) John Nichol, curator of the 70th anniversary exhibit of the dam tragedy, sits before the display at the Santa Paula Union Oil Museum.

Tina Gerson/ Daily News

(3-- ran in Valley, Simi, SAC, and Conejo Editions only) A news photo shows the dam, once described as the ``safest dam ever built,'' after its collapse.

Delmar Watson

(4 -- ran in SAC, AV, Simi and Conejo only -- color in SAC, Simi, and Conejo only) Curator John Nichol displays the St. Francis Dam disaster exhibit at the Santa Paula Union Oil Museum.

Tina Gerson/ Daily News

(5 -- ran in SAC, Simi and Conejo only -- color in SAC only) Sculptor Eric Richards works on a bronze of the motorcycle officer who warned townsfolk of the disaster.

Tina Gerson/ Daily News

(6 -- ran in SAC, Simi and Conejo only) Los Angeles County Coroner Frank Nance, center, and an assistant perform the grim task of identifying those who perished in the disaster. These photographs are from the book ``Quick Watson, the Camera,'' edited by Delmar Watson, a collection of news photos taken by the famous Watson brothers.

Map: Dam collapse