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THE BIG FLOOD OF 1938 by Peter J. Leibert

In late January 1938, a pattern of almost-continuous and frequently intense rainfall developed in southern California and culminated in a series of storms that affected an area much farther south than usual.  On March 2,1938, with the southern California terrain saturated, a massive, slow-moving warm front collided with the west-trending mountains (the San Gabriel mountains and the San Bernardino mountains) and resulted in near-record rainfall.  In this mountain area from February 27 to March 4th an average of 22.5 inches of rainfall was recorded.  The greatest rainfall recorded during this storm was 32.2 inches at an 8,300-foot measuring station located somewhere in the mountains.

Floods occurred from San Luis Obispo to San Diego and inland as far as the Mojave Desert.  Runoff from the overall storm was greatest in the Santa Ana, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles River basins.  In Orange County, an extraordinary 10 inches of rainfall was recorded on the 2nd of March alone, two inches of it occurring in a single hour. 

The Riverside area did get the continual rain, but I have been unable to locate any real recorded information related to what actually was measured in the city of Riverside region.  I personally can vouch for this.  We did have a lot of water surrounding our house at the corner of Magnolia Avenue and Hughes Alley, and it was a lot, lot, lot more that any I had ever experienced - to the limits of my memory.   

That water that I saw might best be described as “a sheet of water mostly flowing past our house seeking lower levels”, but it was a “tame” flow during the times I was watching it.  Another of my opinions is that the depth of the water was probably between two to four inches deep during the daylight hours when I was keeping watch.   

But how do I then explain the fact that the basement of our house filled up to the brim.  Well, there were vents into the underside of the house, but these entries would require the water outside to rise up to a depth of five or six inches, and maybe even more.  Defiantly more!

Even though I was only 8-years-old during early March 1938, it is of my personal opinion that the flood scene, as I saw it out the back screen of our house, could not have been directly impacted by any of the events that I am now going to describe. 

During the early morning hours of March 3^rd, a flash flood rushed out of the San Bernardino Mountains carrying boulders and gravel, smashing hundreds of homes and eventually breaking through a dam in Colton.  In Riverside, this flood destroyed the city’s sewage system and the lower parts of the community was covered with water. 

The storm water from the mountains was temporarily held back in the Santa Ana River basin by a load of debris dammed against a railroad bridge near the small town of Prado (southwest of Riverside near where the Prado Dam is now).  Very quickly the community of Prado was under more than six feet of water.  The river continued to rise until it was 30 feet above normal. 

This dam holding back the water eventually broke through and a wall of water swept down the Santa Ana Canyon toward Orange County.  It has been estimated that the water that flowed down the canyon had a peak flow of over 100,000 cubic feet per second.  The surging Santa Ana River reportedly had waves as high as fifteen feet as it came down the river.   

Eventually every bridge from the mountains to the coastline was either destroyed or damaged beyond use.  My Dad was one of the last people to drive across the Pedley bridge (Van Buren Avenue) before it let go.  The two-lane Santa Ana canyon road was totally washed out and destroyed.   

Really hard hit were the communities of Atwood (near Placentia), La Jolla, and Anaheim.  The river breached its banks and crashed into Atwood and La Jolla and washed away almost every home.  As the water got into the flats of Orange County it spread out into a seven-mile wide sheet of water that swept through Anaheim, destroying homes, buildings, cars, and wiping out public utilities.   

Three of Anaheim’s five wells were flooded and contaminated as many parts of the city became covered by two to six feet of water.  Most of northern Anaheim lost all of their electric power.  The telephone company had their battery (power) building flooded and that resulted in losing all telephone communications.  Many additional nearby communities, including Buena Park, Cypress, and Garden Grove, were flooded with one to two feet as the water continued to drain out of the Santa Ana Canyon. 

The lowlands between Huntington Beach and the bluffs of Costa Mesa became a large sea of surging muddy water filled with everything from furniture to livestock.  Balboa, Newport, and Santa Ana were completely marooned for days. 

The total Orange County population at that time was about 130,000.  Today this same area is populated by almost 3,000,000.  That is almost 25 times the numbers of people.  Similarly, the impacted areas of San Bernardino and Riverside counties have grown during the last 66 years. 

Peak flows in much of the area probably were the greatest since the 1861-62 floods.  In 1938, eighty-seven lives were lost, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated the damage at about $79 million.   

HISTORIC CLOUDBURSTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

(These paragraphs are being written in the spring of 2005 to record a summary of the key highlights of the big rainy seasons seen in Southern California.)

Here we are in the spring of 2005.  From my viewpoint, I can only remember one time during my life when the amount of rain even came close to the rain that fell on Southern California during the recent few weeks.  I am quite certain that we would all conclude that we have a lot of rain dumped on us since the middle of December 2004.  

It might be an appropriate time for all of us to review some history about this subject as it relates to Southern California.  This history lesson must begin after non-Indian communities began keeping records.