Talk back: Do you remember when the Baldwin Hills dam burst?

Fifty years ago, the Baldwin Hills Reservoir dam ruptured, sending 150 million gallons of Los Angeles drinking water roaring into homes and cars along nearby Cloverdale Avenue.

Five people were killed, 65 hillside homes were torn apart and 210 other homes and apartments were damaged in an area between Jefferson and La Cienega boulevards and La Brea Avenue.

On Saturday, the anniversary of the disaster, survivors gathered where the dam burst, in what is now the Upper Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.

PHOTOS: The 1963 Baldwin Hills dam collapse

Do you remember when the dam burst? Leave us your memories in the comments section below. Times readers emailed reporter Bob Pool with their recollections of the disaster.

“On the day in which the dam finally let go, my father Ben was at home watching TV and saw the ongoing story and drama of the dam failing. Knowing my mom and I worked at the Fedco store and in the path of the water should the dam break, he called my mom and asked “do people there know about the leaking dam?” reader Morris Dobbs said in an email.

His mother told her bosses, but Fedco management did not want to close the store during Christmas season, Dobbs wrote.

FULL STORY: Survivors recall Baldwin Hills dam collapse

“When managers realized the dam had broken, my boss told me to get all the money out of the cash registers at the meat market, deli, and snack bar. I looked out the front exit doors and saw the first of the water making its way into the parking lot slowly rising, until I saw a VW start to float toward the building. There was not much panic or hysteria but some folks decided not to pay for the merchandise in their shopping carts.”

Lorna Y. Reed recalled watching the cars, refrigerators and furniture swirling in the rushing water from atop the roof of her apartment in Village Green. Her husband and a friend ran to get their cars and ended up having to swim to safety, helping people escape their apartments along the way. A helicopter rescued Reed, her 10-month-old twins and a friend from the rooftop.

“I remember how frightening it was for our parents and friends and family, watching it all unfold, knowing we were in the midst of it, and not knowing if we were o.k. No cell phones in those days!!!!” she wrote in an email.

Forrest Bond was a USC student working at Fedco at the time.

“During the summers I worked as a beach lifeguard so I knew what had to be done. I made more rescues that day than the entire previous summer. People could not get out of their cars because of the force of the water,” he wrote.

He pulled people from their cars and to a ladder to the roof of Fedco. The wall of water ripped out an empty gas storage tank from a nearby construction site and sent it hurtling toward two women standing on the top of their pickup truck. Bond said he looped a rope around his chest and swam out to them, convincing them to get in the water so they could be pulled to safety.

“Then BAM the tank hit the truck and off it went with the current. I had a rope burn across my chest for weeks. As the water subsided and there was no longer a threat I was able to hitchhike back home to Culver City. I walked in the front door with no shirt and no shoes still soaking wet and my folks yelled, ‘Hurry look what’s on TV! You won’t believe it!’”

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