The St. Francis Dam Failure

This paper summarizes what was arguably the greatest American civil engineering failure of the last century, the catastrophic collapse of a two hundred foot high curved concrete gravity dam situated in a canyon some forty miles north west of the center of Los Angeles, resulting in several hundred fatalities. The learning from failure process is still an effective, if preferably avoidable, tool of benefit to all branches of engineering. Notwithstanding the fact that the failure of the St. Francis Dam occurred more than seventy-five years ago, the circumstances of its design, construction and demise, coupled with the many efforts made to investigate the event, continue to fascinate forensic engineers.