L.A. Scene / The City Then and Now  February 07, 1994|CECILIA
RASMUSSEN  First came the flood, then came the fire.  The
warning was sounded at 11:15 a.m.--by a man named Revere, the
caretaker of the massive Baldwin Hills Dam.  It was Dec. 14,
1963, and people were still talking about President John F.
Kennedy's assassination three weeks before. Residents were
preparing for the holidays, and Revere G. Wells was on his
rounds when he heard water gurgling through a leak somewhere in
the Baldwin Hills Reservoir, which supplied water for 100,000 to
500,000 residents from mid-Los Angeles to the airport.  He
searched, discovering a crack in the 12-year-old dam about the
width of a pencil.  Within three hours, as residents were
frantically evacuated from the water's likely path, the crack
had become a 75-foot-wide hole, unleashing 292 million gallons
of water that gushed from the base of the dam at Cloverdale
Avenue, and slammed into homes in its path. Most residents were
alerted to the evacuation by the police or th