Movie Review: The Forgotten Tragedy

Last year we wrote a blog about The Warning, a statue honoing two motor officers who came to be known as the Paul Reveres of Santa Paula.   The statue was an unanticipated discovery on a motorcycle ride through Santa Paula, and it had my attention because it’s not the kind of monument you see every day.

The other night Sue and I were flipping through the movies on Amazon Prime, and to my great surprise one I had not seen before popped up:  The Forgotten Tragedy:  The Story of the St. Francis Dam. 

You know, I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first saw that statue in Santa Paula 10 years ago, I had never heard of the St. Francis Dam and its collapse.  I grew up on the east coast, and there’s a lot we never heard about back there.  It took a little digging for me to learn about California’s second largest disaster ever (the only event involving greater loss of life in the Golden State was the San Francisco earthquake), so the idea of a movie on the St. Francis Dam and its collapse had my immediate attention.   The Forgotten Tragedy is a documentary and it’s very well done.  It even included a bit about the motorcycle officers in the above statue (although it only mentioned one).

Trust me on this, my friends.  The Forgotten Tragedy:  The Story of the St. Francis Dam is worth viewing.