Snapshot Exhibit Focuses on Flood From Personal Angle

They are raw snapshots, some fuzzy and out of focus, all of them amateurish and rough. Even so, the images are arresting--a house shoved into the middle of the street, flattened orchards, a row of cars that belonged to Edison camp workers who lay dead in the rubble.

The collection of more than 100 snapshots depict the aftermath of the 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse, one of California’s worst disasters. But what makes this exhibit most unusual is that most of the images have never been seen outside the families of the photographers.

“These snapshots have come to me from black-page family albums and yellow, crumbling envelopes. They have never been on public display,” said John Nichols, owner of the Snapshot Museum, a small gallery dedicated to that simplest and most humble form of historical document, the snapshot.

And because the pictures were taken by amateurs with simple cameras, the images offer a uniquely honest and personal portrait of the disaster, according to Nichols. “History is determined by what documents and artifacts survive. In most photographs that we find, ancestors have a fresh haircut, they’re in their Sunday best, and they’re standing frozen for their portrait. For me, that’s not as close to reality as the family snapshot. These photographs are documents of daily life,” he said.

In this case, daily life was a tragedy of almost unimaginable proportions. Just minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the 205-foot-tall St. Francis Dam near Castaic burst, spilling a mountainous wall of water that killed 420 people and destroyed four bridges and 1,250 homes on its 54-mile rampage to the Pacific Ocean.

No one is certain what caused the collapse. Possibilities range from unstable ground giving way to the composition of concrete used for construction and an underlying fault zone breaking open.

Whatever the cause, the snapshots hold a special meaning for Nichols. “You can put yourself behind the eyes of an amateur photographer who was excited and jumped up and took pictures. I think, ‘Why did they take this?’

“Because the snapshot is fuzzy . . . [it] can have a more highly charged emotional component if the person is willing to slough off prejudice that it is only a snapshot,” Nichols said.

In one haunting photo, for instance, the cars of men who worked for Edison, stringing power lines near Piru, are shown neatly parked, waiting for owners who would never return. Of 118 workers who had been sleeping in their tents at the time of the flood, only 13 survived.

Another shot shows the moving flood waters filled with debris. “It was an unusual photograph because I had never seen the actual flood water,” Nichols said. “The photographer was probably standing on the bank watching the flood water. There’s a half bridge in the background, and it’s close to the Pacific Ocean.”

Some survivors of the disaster are still alive and have made the journey to the museum to remember the horror of that day.

Pictures Bring Back Unhappy Memories

Lois Topping, 80, of Oak View, was 8 years old at the time of the flood. Seeing the snapshots of buildings lifted from their foundations reminded her what happened to her own home.

“It was sad and desolate to look at those pictures,” Topping said. “His pictures show there’s a lot of silt. It just gave me a sickening feeling. That deep silt smelled so bad because it went through barnyards and animal waste. It had a sour, ugly smell. In those days, they didn’t have indoor plumbing. That silt ruined everything we had.”

Her parents had just moved from Missouri to the banks of the Santa Clara River near Saticoy. After midnight on March 12, a man came to their door, told them the dam had burst and said they should go to higher ground. Her father was unconvinced.

“There’s been no hard rains. I’m not going,” he said, according to Topping.

“My mom was a very intelligent lady. She just didn’t sit still. She said, ‘Now let’s think, the man wouldn’t have come to get us if he didn’t think the water would hit us,’ ” Topping recalled.

“She told my dad, ‘If you won’t come, I’m taking the girls and going over to Ventura,’ ” Topping said. Her mother was one of the few women who knew how to drive a car at that time, she said.

When they returned from Ventura the following day, they discovered that their home had been dragged more than a mile from its original location. Everything in it was destroyed.

Her father survived. She learned that another man came to the house later and convinced her father to leave. As the men crossed a nearby bridge, they helped push a stalled car filled with people across the bridge moments before the flood waters ripped it out.

Topping said people portrayed her father as a hero. “He would have sat there till the water lapped at his feet,” she said.

“My mom had the courage. She was not just going to sit there,” said Topping. “After being warned there’s a disaster coming, don’t fool around.”

It was a lesson that served her during the difficult years that followed the flood--the Depression, World War II and, in her later years, her fight against cancer.

“It is better to prepare and prevent than sit and let [trouble] hit you,” Topping said.

Survivor Recalls Family’s Escape

Doris Navarro Jackson, 86, of Ventura, has visited the Snapshot Museum four or five times to see the exhibit. The photos have brought back memories she didn’t often discuss in the years after the flood.

She was 14 at the time and living with her father and seven siblings in the Bardsdale area, south of the Santa Clara River near Fillmore. On March 12, her older sister, Carmen, woke to a rustling sound and called to her father. Although her father said it was the wind and told her to go back to sleep, Carmen got up and looked outside.

“She said, ‘Papa, the wind isn’t blowing. I see silvery stuff and it’s coming this way,’ ” Jackson recalled.

Her father told everyone to get out. The family ran across a walnut orchard, dragging the little ones. They fell into an irrigation ditch and barely scrambled out before the water rushed in.

“Papa was the last one out. Just as he got out you could hear the thud of water,” said Jackson. The family ran to a farmhouse where a woman lived with her sons and her father.

“We were whimpering and crying, bloody and muddy,” said Jackson.

The woman, Mrs. Morris, prepared baths for the family, gave them hot chocolate and toast and built a fire in the living room where they slept.

“She was so tickled to have us there. We stayed a week or two. She hated to see us go. We called her ‘Mama,’ ” Jackson said.

Jackson said that her father taught them to help people and that the kindness of Mrs. Morris reaffirmed that lesson.

“I’ve always tried to be a good mother like that lady was to us. I tried to be good to other people, too. I did pass that on to my children. After all, that’s how this world is. If you don’t help each other, what’s the use of living?” said Jackson.

The snapshots are on display until June 30. Admission is free at John Nichols Gallery, 935 E. Main St., Santa Paula. Hours are noon-4 p.m., Thursday through Sunday.