Survivors mark 50th anniversary of Baldwin Hills dam collapse

Several survivors were among those who attended a memorial ceremony Saturday that marked the 50th anniversary of the collapse of the old Baldwin Hills Reservoir.

Hundreds filed into a grassy valley that now sprawls over what had been a 66-foot-deep reservoir with a capacity to store 292 million gallons of drinking water until its earthen wall ruptured Dec. 14, 1963, and sent a 50-foot surge of water roaring into homes and cars along nearby Cloverdale Avenue.

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

The father of Barbara Whitaker, a 76-year-old retired executive assistant from Irvine, was one of those who died. Archie V. MacDonald was 71 when he helped his wife, Marie, escape from the 627-unit Village Green residential complex.

“Mom got across to the car, but Dad went back to see if he’d locked the front door. The water just picked him up and carried him off,” Whitaker said. “Mom held onto a tree and was rescued by a helicopter.”

Fred Kong, now an 81-year-old retired city inspector, was shopping in the nearby Fedco discount store when the dam burst. “Water started coming in, and I didn’t pay any attention until it got to my ankles. Then they announced over the P.A. to get out right away, and people started running,” Kong said.

Kong, who still lives with his wife, Ruth, on Cloverdale, went home and climbed into his rubber chest waders before setting out for Village Green to help people. The scene he encountered was surreal.

“Police black-and-whites were floating down La Brea like Dixie cups,” he said. “I saw some clothing in the bushes and then saw a hand and saw it was a man. I put him in a tree so the body wouldn’t wash away. Forty-five minutes later I found another body and put it in a tree so it wouldn’t float away either.”

Saturday’s commemorative ceremony included a display of historic photos of the reservoir’s construction, its failure and the aftermath. Village Green resident George Rheault told visitors his research into the disaster suggests that the reservoir’s earthen dam was built across an earthquake “spur” connected to the Newport-Inglewood fault and was subject to settling because of that and nearby oil well pumping.

“The DWP guys were heroes,” Rheault, an attorney, told those examining the old photos. “They heard rushing water and alerted the engineers who started emptying the reservoir. They got a third of the water out. A hundred motorcycle cops came in to evacuate people.

“About half of them lost their motorcycles in the flood. If this had happened at 2 in the morning, maybe a thousand people could have been killed.”

Saturday’s ceremony included a moment of silence at 3:38 p.m. -- the exact moment the dam collapsed that day half a century ago.

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bob.pool@latimes.com