Disasters

Times writer Frank Clifford has made a good point about the absence of any reference to the Saint Francis Dam disaster in the Department of Water and Power’s exhibits at our museum (“L.A. History: The Future Looks Good,” Part I, April 19). The Castaic Reservoir Visitors’ Center also shows nothing.

While this disaster is certainly an embarrassment, disasters like that will continue to occur if we continue to pretend that they can’t happen and have never happened. The one thing that success breeds is complacency. There is no better example than the Valdez oil spill. For no matter how far our technology develops, the human condition is still present. A complacent human can ignore the most elementary safeguards and eventually will--given enough time.

The DWP should be pressured to display this piece of history in the hope that it never happens again.

JAMES V. BRONKE

Lebec