Buck Wargo
GLENDALE - The 1920s were a time of growth in Glendale where the city
grew more than 500% to surpass 62,000, but some in the community paid for
that development with their lives.
Forty-four people died from mudslides in Montrose and La Crescenta as
floods that struck the region on New Year's Day 1934.
It was one of many disasters caused by heavy rains since the city's
formation 30 years earlier. Torrential downpours in 1905 brought
attention to inadequate draining systems. The year 1914 that became known
as "the year of the Great Flood" when the Verdugo Wash, Sycamore Canyon
and the L.A. River swelled their banks, leaving downtown flooded.
But that disaster was nothing compared to the 1934 flood, which
brought awareness of L.A. flooding problems to the federal government and
sped up the concrete channelization of the L.A. River system.
Geographer Blake Gumbrecht, who has written a book on the history of
the L.A. River and flooding problems in the region, said the 1934 deaths
resulted from a wall of mud coming down from the mountains, where
vegetation was destroyed a few months earlier because of fires. If the
vegetation was intact, the flooding could have been avoided, he said.
There wasn't a lot of flooding along the L.A. River itself, but its
tributaries that went into the hillsides contributed to most of the
problems, Gumbrecht said. More than 13 inches of rain fell at the time,
bringing the season total to 19 inches.
"It was a reflection of the growing urban development in the
hillsides," Gumbrecht said. "It wasn't wise to build there. It was a
different kind of flood than they had before. It showed the growing
urbanization in Southern California."
The rains started on New Year's Eve, the hillsides already saturated
from earlier storms, Gumbrecht said. The most tragic of the deaths
happened when 12 residents fled their homes to an American Legion Hall on
Fairway Avenue where a Red Cross station was established. They thought
they were safe, only to be killed by a wall of mud and rolling boulders,
he said.
In all, 44 people were killed in the great flood of 1934.
Glendale historian Ellen Perry said she recalls hearing stories of the
flood from her father, Charles, who worked for the Works Project
Administration cleaning up after the flood.
"It was horrible. I knew the family of a little girl that was washed
off her front porch. It was very tragic."
Four years later, the Glendale area was again harmed byflooding.
