Patrick Kielty's Mulholland Drive

Whoo-hoo!

Oh, it doesn't get any better than this!

Top-down, sun out, driving up Mulholland Drive.

One of the most iconic roads in the whole of America.

It overlooks Los Angeles,

arguably one of the most iconic cities in the world.

This road is named after William Mulholland.

I don't know that much about William, but I do know two things -

one, he's from Belfast.

And two,

without him, none of all of that would exist.

I first came here when I was 18,

and I fell totally in love with the place.

But it's only recently

that I discovered its connection with Belfast.

If William Mulholland hadn't come along when he did,

there could not have been a Los Angeles as we know it today.

He was the architect and builder of the Los Angeles Aqueduct,

one of the greatest engineering projects in the world.

He was a genius.

It was remarkable what was accomplished over 100 years ago.

He's an Irishman who changed the lives of millions of people.

And yet, up to a few weeks ago, I had never even heard of him.

How did they do that? How did people not...?

-Mulholland, you've got to read that book.

-About Mulholland?

-Yeah.

What I discover is that the story of how LA got its water

is one of money, greed and power.

And it's still impacting people today.

-So many people in this town that have Lyme Disease.

-Really?

Think it has a lot to do with the stuff they're breathing off that lake.

Surprisingly, it remains an open wound that, even today,

people are reluctant to talk about.

AMERICAN ACCENT: Don't you ever call this number again!

I have a dog and a gun and I will use it!

This is my journey to discover the truth about William Mulholland.

COCKNEY ACCENT: This is where they shot Terminator, this is where they shot Grease.

And this is where they shoot Patrick Kielty's Mulholland Drive.

CAR HORN

My journey with William starts here, though, in Northern Ireland.

Because there's a couple of things that you need to know about me.

This is where I'm from, this is where my family's from.

This is the Mourne Mountains. It's beautiful.

I feel like I'm on Billy Connelly's World Tour Of Scotland.

"Take a look at it! Isn't it gorgeous?

"And people don't know about it!"

And German tourists now come,

and they take their tea and they look at this, and they say,

"Isn't it lovely they've stopped fighting?"

But I'm not here for this, and the Kieltys didn't come to the Mourne Mountains because of this.

The Kieltys came to the Mourne Mountains for sexy stuff,

like this.

It's a wall.

It might just be a wall to you, but behind that wall

is hundreds and thousands of gallons of water.

You see, my great-grandad was one of the men who helped build

dams like this. And my dad worked for the water service.

He looked after all the leaks in County Down,

and made sure everything was cushty.

And for you, that might not look sexy.

But for a Kielty, water runs through the veins.

Along with Guinness and whiskey,

and, on a Sunday night, gin.

And this is the reason why I need to find out about William Mulholland.

Because he came from here, he went to LA, and he did stuff like this.

The engineering equivalent of Elle Macpherson in her bra and knickers.

Sexy.

Almost as sexy as this place - LA.

Which I now call my second home.

And every time I come here, I marvel at just how, well,

lush this place is.

But despite all the greenery, on average,

this town only gets 15 inches of rain a year.

Some deserts get more.

So how do they do it? Where does all the water come from?

ENGINE REVS

Why, this car is automatic...

ENGINE REVS

..it's systematic...

ENGINE REVS

..it's hyyyyyydromatic.

Hang on, Nick.

Why, it's greased lightning!

So, LA, like every other major city has a major river.

And this is it, the LA River.

There's only one tiny problem with the LA River -

I'm able to drive in it.

Ah.

LA is susceptible to flooding, which is

why this huge concrete channel was built in the 1930s.

But most of the time, the river is just

a tiny trickle of water down the middle.

When I first came out to LA in 1989,

I used to drive across one of these bridges and I used to look down,

and I knew that they'd shot Grease there. And I thought to myself,

one day, you will shoot your own movie down in that river.

It's not the toughest of gigs this, really, is it?

Just driving up and down. VERY DISTANT BANG Was that a gunshot there?

Was that a firework or a gunshot?

This is the problem about filming in downtown LA on the 4th of July -

you're just not quite sure...

..if it's a firework or a gunshot?

Obviously...

You know...

I grew up in Belfast, that type of stuff doesn't scare me.

We should go.

-Let's go!

-Let's go, let's go.

Originally, the river was the city's primary source of water.

But by the turn of the 19th century,

LA's population had grown to around 100,000 people.

A lack of water meant that it could grow no more.

To find out how they solved the problem, I've come here, to the

headquarters of the Los Angeles Department Of Power And Water.

Where they have a modest museum in the foyer,

dedicated to William Mulholland.

So this is it, this is the Mulholland Museum.

Which I didn't even know existed.

You guys won't even know it existed.

I'm looking at an Irishman comes to America, which is just brilliant.

He was a bit of a rogue, I think.

He obviously left home, not really getting on with the aul' fella,

as they say.

Then him and his brother decided to jump on a boat.

They ended up in Acapulco, as you do.

And then, from San Francisco,

they decided to ride horses all the way down to LA.

Just for the craic.

It's only a small museum,

but the more I look around it, the more I'm impressed with William.

From that horseback arrival in LA, he educated himself at home.

He read books, he studied,

and he became a self-made superintendent of the water company.

With a reputation as a can-do kind of guy.

He used this. This is the Thatcher's calculating instrument.

It looks like one of those tombolas that you pick a ticket out at Christmas in a bazaar.

And say, it's a buff-coloured ticket.

It's essentially a 30-foot engineer's slide rule.

And he learned to use that.

I could actually look at that for the length of career that

William Mulholland had, and I still wouldn't know what that's about.

So there's one reason, really, why this museum is here.

It's the turn of the century, LA is pretty small,

and it's running out of water already.

And after years of surveys, they chose a water source north of LA.

How far north?

Well, in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

This is 233 miles from LA.

So how were they going to get the water?

Who did they call?

William Mulholland.

And he built the Los Angeles Aqueduct,

from here right the way back to LA.

And just even seeing this model, it's amazing.

And that's where I want to go next.

William's vision, determination and guts to think that he could build

an aqueduct is only matched by his skill in completing it.

Today, it is still a triumph of engineering.

Crossing valleys, mountains, deserts, right into the heart of California.

And to see it for myself, I head north to Owens Valley.

It is here, 100 years ago, that they discovered the Owens River.

Fed year-round by the melting snow from the Sierra Nevada mountains.

I've arranged to meet the current chief engineer, Jim,

at the start of William's aqueduct.

This is the spot where the Owens River was diverted to bring

water into the human-made ditch that flows south and eventually goes

into it a concrete-lined section, it goes into the pipes that

brings water, strictly by gravity, to Los Angeles, 233 miles south.

That wouldn't have happened without William Mulholland.

It was his genius to bring water from this wonderful area

that has snowpack, to Los Angeles.

-And over 100 years later, this is still bringing the water to LA?

-Yes.

This provides, on a typical year,

a third of the city of Los Angeles' water.

A third.

To do this today would be pretty impressive.

To do it back then, with what Mulholland had...

What was he actually working with?

Well, back then we didn't have aeroplanes.

We didn't have computers.

We did not understand geology like we do today.

So back then, they were doing just simple civil engineering

calculations for hydraulics.

But the physical labour to bring this in was basically mules

and horses to actually bring the materials up.

They had 4,000 people labour.

And then, they had to build labour camps to feed all these people.

And the weather here is extreme.

It gets extremely cold and extremely hot.

So that was quite a challenge.

But they were able to do it within that five-year period.

A remarkable feat of engineering,

and a remarkable feat of human beings.

Pretty incredible.

The aqueduct starts as an open ditch.

But to get it over hills further south,

a pipeline had to be constructed.

Jim directs me to a section of the aqueduct that passes right

through the heart of the Mojave Desert.

Phew!

This is Jawbone Canyon.

It's pleasantly warm, folks.

Just in around your 40 degrees Celsius.

There's no real place on the aqueduct that shows you better what

Mulholland had to do to get the water to LA.

On this side, we've got 1000 feet, on this side,

we've got 500 feet on this side.

So rather than go around it, Mulholland said, right,

we're going to take a pipe,

we're going to run it down,

across the bottom and straight back up.

And you look at it now and you think to yourself, well, that's not

very impressive, Paddy, he can pump it down and pump it up...

But he didn't pump it.

It was all done with gravity.

And it's an amazing feat of engineering.

And the miracle today is that a third of LA's water, today,

still comes down that pipe,

along the bottom,

and straight back up that hill.

It's pretty impressive.

This place is round the corner from Death Valley.

So that means summer highs of 40 degrees Celsius,

plus nightly lows of -10.

But despite all this, the aqueduct was constructed on time,

and, believe it or not, on budget.

To understand what a miracle this was,

I've come to the nearby Eastern California Museum.

This is the stuff that built the aqueduct.

These huge, huge pipes that they used. They went on this.

And teams of men pulled it through in the heat of the day.

It's half one in the afternoon,

and I can't put my hand on that because of the heat.

And yet the lads were pulling this stuff through.

And so, the sheer effort that they had to go through to make

this thing happen in the middle of the desert.

You know, "Kielty, come on!

"Shift this! You're behind on your shift!"

I can barely lift that, it's not even full of concrete.

And it's all just lying here. It's just rotten.

This is the graveyard to the whole thing.

Some of this stuff should probably be in LA.

And some of this stuff should probably be in Belfast.

You know, there's enough stuff lying here that nobody really cares about,

that they should bring some of this stuff home.

Let people know what Mulholland did.

The day the water arrived in LA,

tens of thousands of people turned up to see it.

Mulholland was hailed as the conquering hero,

and given an honorary degree.

So this is where the water comes into LA, the LA Cascades.

Which, as you can see by the pipe running down the side,

is completely unnecessary.

But then again, this is LA.

So I can imagine the chat.

"All right so, I've build the world's longest aqueduct,

"I'm just going to bring it in and just pipe it under the city."

"No, whaddaya mean, you're going to pipe it under the city?"

"I'll just bring it in, bring the water."

"Come on, Willie - we need the people to see something.

"This is showbiz, this is LA, Willie. Come on, whaddaya got for us?"

"Erm... I don't know. I could maybe throw a couple of blocks in."

"OK, we like blocks. Now what do the blocks do?"

"Erm... The blocks make the water sort of bubble a bit."

"I like that! Will the light glisten off it?" "The light'll glisten off it."

"Will the people of LA be impressed by this, Willie?"

"I think it'll be OK." "They better be impressed, Willie,

"or this will be the last job you'll ever have in this town!"

"OK. Here's the Cascades."

With the water came massive expansion.

And because of the aqueduct, the population of Los Angeles exploded.

In the 20 years from construction starting, LA grew seven times over.

William though he'd given the city water for years to come.

But within a few years of opening those floodgates, guess what?

The city needed more.

Because the city had effectively bought up the entire Owens Valley,

originally to protect the supply and the quality, they now had full

water rights, and so could start pumping water out of the water table.

Which is exactly what they did.

So, as LA became the fastest-growing city in the whole of America,

what were the effects on the Owens Valley?

And I can't imagine that William Mulholland was exactly popular.

We're now driving into the Owens Valley.

Into one of these towns that has basically been pumped dry of water.

And I have absolutely no idea what type of reception

we're going to get when we mention my man.

I'm a bit nervous, if I'm being very honest.

We actually tried to call someone up here to talk to.

And we thought, you know, we're doing a documentary

about something that happened years and years ago,

and someone will say, ah, yes, I remember that.

And the conversation basically went like this:

"Hello, we're from the BBC,

"we would like to talk to you about William Mulholland."

"How did you get this number? What are you doing?

"Don't you ever call this number again!

"I have a dog and a gun, and I will use it!"

Click.

This is really the only contact that we've actually had with

people just up the road here.

So, erm...

This could be, could be fun.

Could be fun.

Or not fun.

Probably more "not fun" than "fun", I'd imagine.

En route, I pull off the main highway towards the Owens Lake,

fed by the Owens River.

Which, according to Google Maps, has plenty of water.

This is what the Owens Lake is.

And it's huge, it looks like it's ten miles long, six miles wide,

and we've come up to take a look at what this looks like.

Oh-ho!

There's nothing here.

There's basically no lake.

But there's a lovely lakeside village there.

And I should probably go and maybe have a chat with them,

and see what they make of their lakeside properties.

This is going to be messy.

Keeler, population 50.

We come in peace.

People of Keeler, we come in peace.

So, this would have been the local pool,

where people would have hung out and had fun, had a few margaritas.

When there was...water.

Um...I find this very, very sad.

You see, I thought I was going to come up here

and I was going to feel, oh, isn't this terrible, what they did to here?

And now, I kind of feel really, really guilty. I feel...

I feel the place that I live in LA is the reason why this is like this.

And I know this is in the middle of nowhere,

and I know there's only a few houses,

and I know that LA needed the water and it was a huge, big city,

but it doesn't really make this any less tragic, really.

Keeler seems deserted,

apart from some weird sprinklers out on the lake.

I need to find answers. But first, I need to find people.

There doesn't seem to be anybody. I mean actually anybody living here.

There's a sign on the wall there which says, "We don't dial 911."

And there's two guns beside that.

With an American flag.

Hang on, so we've been here a little while

and this is the only person so far that appears to be alive.

So I'm going to chance my arm and go and say howdy-doody

and hopefully she doesn't have a gun.

She's smiling.

It's a good sign.

How you guys doing? Hot and muggy here today.

-It's all that rain.

-Hey, how are you doing?

-OK.

-I'm Patrick.

-I'm Suzanne.

-Suzanne, very nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

You are the only person I've seen in the entire place.

-Are you serious?

-Yeah.

-Oh, my gosh.

-It's, um...

-Well, there's a few of 'em.

-Yeah?

There's supposed to be 50 population,

but I've never seen all of them at once.

-Probably 30.

-At any one time?

-Yeah.

Suzanne Seymour Heckerthorn lives in an abandoned petrol station

that used to belong to her parents.

AMERICAN ACCENT: But no-one seems to be stoppin' here no more.

-You know, we've just driven in.

-Right.

-And we were coming...

I looked at the map and there was a big lake

and I thought I'd come and have a look at the lake.

What's happened to the...?

-Oh, Los Angeles has the water.

-Yeah?

Were hoping they'll give it back someday so that we have,

you know, lakefront property.

So that's why you've got the Los Angeles T-shirt on, is it?

Yeah. Give us back our water!

So, what happened here?

There were, like, more than 3,000 people lived here at one time.

-Really?

-They had a Sears. A Sears, yeah!

-There was a Sears here?

-Yes.

-A department store?

Yeah, there were all kinds of stores and everything,

there were a couple of hotels, probably 40 years ago.

They started draining the lake and so what we ended up with was

a dry lake bed, and when the wind blows, we get the soda ash.

It's like a white dust.

So, when it's blowing like that,

I just close all the windows in the house and just stay in there

until, you know, I can come out again.

-So that's why they...?

-So many people in this town have lung disease.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-And it's all because you think the...?

I think it has a lot to do

with the stuff they're breathing off that lake.

So what happens out on the lake bed now?

They have a project going where they're putting down straw,

they're putting straw out, big bales of straw,

and they're putting three plants to each bale

and it's a certain plant, I guess, that grows pretty fast

and will spread, and they're hoping that it will make it

cover over that soda ash so that it doesn't blow any more.

-Ah, OK.

-Yeah, and they have water systems that are watering it,

so we're really curious to find out if it's going to work or not.

I hope it does.

I really admire Suzanne's spirit.

She's a survivor in a town that's clearly struggling.

Further north, on the main truck route,

I hit Lone Pine, which seems like it's caught in a time warp.

Even though they're not next to a dried-up lake bed,

there's only one topic that they're touchy about -

water.

I really want to find out more answers

about what people up here think about William Mulholland.

So, wanting to blend in, I stop at Lloyd's of Lone Pine Western Wear.

AMERICAN ACCENT: Established in 1838, son.

So, we think that, or is there another one you'd maybe recommend?

-What do you think?

-It looks good, but how does it feel?

You want to be able to snug it down. You snug it down like this.

-OK.

-Yeah, right here, front and back.

-You put your hands like this.

-Yeah?

No, like this, son. There you go.

And snug it down in a windstorm.

You see, this bit here is hitting the top of my head now.

-Is that what it should be doing?

-Yeah.

It's got a sweat in it so it conforms,

you know, in a floating band, you know.

The good thing about it is that, you know,

my genetic make-up means that I am sweating in this.

-Just as we stand here, this is good.

-Are you? Are you nervous?

-I'm sweating like a priest in a playground here.

-Are you?

-Yeah.

-On the boys' choir?

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

OK, let's go and have a wee look at this.

'After a bit of hat chat,

'I feel confident that I can ask some more searching questions.

'And Rod Ayers soon tells me about how this city of LA

'got hold of the water in the Owens Valley.

'They started by buying up the land.'

Can you answer me just a couple of wee things about the town?

Because, you know, I was told

that this is the town that's most affected by the water going to LA.

And yet it seems to be, you know,

a really nice, little picture-postcard town.

No. You go looking around the country, we're dry.

Yeah?

Go film some of the creeks, they ain't even going across the road.

Did this town do anything when the water was sent down,

-or could anyone do anything?

-No.

It bought ranches in blocks.

The city of Los Angeles owns the land.

They were supposed to give the ranches irrigation water

and everything, but they're sticking all the water out here

on the lake for environmental reasons - dust control.

They said that's the nastiest lake in the state of California.

And because the city of Los Angeles owns the land for its water,

very little development has taken place here for the past 100 years.

Thankfully, though, they still have a saloon,

where I'd arranged to meet some of the old-timers to find out more.

Please, sir?

-Can I get a beer, please?

-Yeah.

'The problem is, everyone gets a little camera shy.'

Seven, eight, nine, ten, and ten is 20.

'After a frosty reception,

'things start to thaw out a little bit with the barman Gary.

'And, when I discover he's from Irish descent, he starts opening up.

'He tells me about the story of Mark Berry.'

Mark Berry was one of the locals back in the day

that was disgruntled about the aqueduct

and there was a lot being said about him and the aqueduct, him and some friends.

They were trying to block the aqueduct, type of thing.

-I don't know the whole history of it.

-Oh, really, yeah?

But, um...Mark was one of those guys.

But he works for DWP now, so I'd be surprised if you can talk to him.

Hang on, so he was one of the guys who tried to block it,

-and now he's working for them?

-They tried to blow it up.

Oh, they tried to blow it up?

Come on, you know. You don't need to be shy about that.

-I'm from Belfast, you know, that's like...

-OK, then you know.

-Yeah, you know...

-But they...

They, er... I mean, there'll be a lot if you're just looking for

"history" history, kind of,

-but if you're talking about how people felt...

-Yeah.

I don't know, off camera, on camera, could be two different things,

-you know what I mean?

-Yeah, it's the way of the world, you know.

Know this - it's a very interesting, rich history about how it all went down.

I decide to stay for a while

and see if anybody else will talk about the bombings.

Spots.

That was a nice, strange chat there.

We were meant to be coming in here and... We were meant to be, er...

..talking to a couple of the old guys about what went on.

Um...and nobody would talk, nobody would talk,

they all got a bit camera shy.

And it all was a little bit weird, and then Gary the, er...

..Gary the barman, er...

said nobody wants to talk.

But then Gary the barman decided to talk, which was very interesting.

So Gary the barman has, er...

..has let the dirty secret of the Lone Pine...out of the bag.

Hm...

Things are not what they seem.

Off camera in the bar, I learned that it was kids

who blew up the aqueduct in 1976 with some stolen dynamite.

But it wasn't just an isolated incident.

The aqueduct has been regularly attacked

since the very day it was completed.

Next morning, and I'm at the Alabama Hills diverting station,

which is a gate that allows the aqueduct water

to be sent back into the Owens River.

And this was the scene of the crime.

No-one was proud enough to go on camera

and talk to me about it in a bar. And it weirdly felt like being back home,

in that Northern Ireland, oh, we did stuff in the '70s we're proud of,

but we don't want to tell you what we did.

But yet, if it gets to a point where the only way...

And remember, this was 63 years later.

..that they had to blow this up to get the water back into their valley,

well, that was desperation.

And so, what Mulholland did to these people...

..it's not right.

I don't think.

But, um...

Oh, I'm doing my great or good thing now.

Oh, I don't know.

So, Lone Pine's population - 2,000. LA - population 4 million.

It's easy to see who needs the water more.

It was all done for the greater good.

The Owens Valley had to lose its water so that LA could grow

and the people of LA could use the water wisely.

Or maybe not.

I've come back to LA

to see how the Owens Valley water is being used today.

You see, that's kind of what it should be.

Right, without irrigation, that's basically LA.

There.

And then...

But you don't want that.

You want this. Look at the lovely lawn.

There we go. Just going to put some greenery over the walls.

Oh, yeah.

And a space rocket. Every home should have one.

With some reindeers...in July.

Now I can't decide

whether William did something brilliant or something monstrous.

Was it for the greater good, or was it for the greater bad?

So I've agreed to meet up with his great-granddaughter

and the current family historian, Christine Mulholland.

I don't know much about him. What type of man was he?

He was a family man, he had five children...who lived.

A couple who didn't. Loved his wife dearly.

He loved his adopted city, he just wanted to work and serve the people.

He taught himself hydrology, geology...

..mathematics.

He was a self-taught engineer, he read and taught himself.

Which makes the building of the aqueduct even more remarkable.

More fantastic, isn't it? He really just knew how to figure things out.

Mm. Where do you think William stood on the purchase of the land

up in Owens Valley?

From my understanding, and what I've been able to find out,

he wasn't involved in the land purchases themselves.

But that had to happen in order to get enough water rights

to make the project work.

They had to keep it kind of on the down-low

because if the people in Owens Valley,

the farmers and landowners up there,

knew that Los Angeles - deep pockets -

-wanted to buy the land, that the prices would have gone sky-high.

-Yes.

You know, do it surreptitiously, on the sly, on the quiet.

But people sold their property willingly.

You see, there was no arm twisting, and this is one of the things

that some people are still pissed off in Owens Valley about -

Los Angeles taking the water. But people willingly sold their land.

And the land had water rights to it.

Do you think people looking back now, in a different era,

-with a different set of values, judge him slightly harsher?

-Absolutely.

Because 100 years ago,

we didn't really know a whole lot about the environment.

We didn't have the kind of water laws California has now.

You cannot take water out of one basin

and put it in another in California any more.

We have come beyond that.

But in that day and age,

it was really looking at the greater good for the greatest number.

And that water up there wasn't serving very many people.

But it could serve a lot of people if it was moved.

So, yeah, people judge in hindsight, which is 20-20.

"Oh, man, we wouldn't..." Well, we couldn't do that today.

We wouldn't and we shouldn't do that today.

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't honour the people

who were great visionaries of their time, to create something like this.

I think that the vast majority of people in Los Angeles

don't really give a shit where their water comes from.

They don't know where it comes from.

Like every place else in the United States or developed countries,

"Oh, we just turn on the faucet, that's where the water comes from."

-It's taken for granted.

-"Put the sprinklers out there and let them run all day." They don't know.

'I liked meeting Christine.

'I felt that it was like kind of meeting William."

Her stature, her attitude, her directness,

and I'm beginning to get a feel of who HE actually was.

She suggests that I visit the memorial fountain,

paid for by public donation.

It looks impressive from a distance, and then you get up close

and it's a little bit shabby.

I kind of think he should have more, he's the father of LA water.

And this is what was built to him five years after he died.

And I'm not sure how happy he would have been about this.

Mulholland, the man who didn't like fuss

and was all about getting the job done.

Over here, we have the fussy fountain in his honour.

And over here, LA in its fourth year of drought.

No water.

He wouldn't have liked that.

William Mulholland devoted his life

to making sure LA had a constant water supply.

But having completed the aqueduct,

he continued building water infrastructure.

By 1926, William was a star. He was a hero, he was a proper LA celebrity.

He was even asked to run for mayor.

Wisely, he said, "I'd rather give birth to a porcupine backwards."

Smart man.

As LA continued to grow.

They needed capacity to store water all year round.

So William's next challenge was to build two huge concrete dams

and create massive reservoirs just north of the city,

the like of which America had never seen before.

Sister dams, they were called the Mulholland and the St Francis.

These were to be his legacy.

But the St Francis dam made him more famous.

This time, for the wrong reasons.

Just before midnight, on 12 March 1928.

The ground on the east side of the dam gave way.

The foundations were lost and water started to pour through.

The west side quickly followed.

An entire valley of water started to move towards

thousands of people sleeping in their beds.

It took just over an hour

for the water to pour from behind the St Francis dam.

12½ billion gallons of water rolled down the hill into the valley.

Here in Santa Paula, 40 miles away from the dam,

the water was two miles wide and 30 feet high,

engulfing Main Street.

It only travelled at 10 miles an hour,

but in it, farms, forests,

animals and bodies.

Hundreds died. Hundreds were never found.

To this day, it is the biggest man-made disaster

in the history of California.

And William Mulholland's name was on it.

The St Francis dam ruins were left abandoned in a remote canyon.

All that remains today - a pile of concrete and twisted metal.

You just look back here

and you see the shadow up the canyon,

and all of that was water, and it was right the way back.

You know, the vastness of this is...

That's where the terrible things happened,

but the amount of water in here...

I see why he built it just here, and here's the two shortest points,

we'll pop this in, we'll have all this water, this'll be great, but...

It is vast.

And just this small section was all that was holding it.

It's hard to believe.

You know, it's all grown back, the birds are singing,

you look at this, it doesn't...

It doesn't really feel real.

And yet, round that corner, down that hill...

..hundreds of people died.

This place looks beautiful, and it feels...

It doesn't feel like a disaster site.

And, to be honest, standing here now,

knowing what happened down there to those people, I...

..I couldn't give a shit about Mulholland...

..or his legacy, really.

You know, that dam broke and those people died, and...

..if it's on his record, or his legacy, well...

..it's not really going to bring anybody back, is it?

The sister to the St Francis dam still stands today,

looming over the city. It's called the Mulholland Dam,

and the water it contains is the Hollywood Reservoir,

just under the famous sign.

It's where I've agreed to meet Power and Water's

retired engineer and historian, Fred Barker.

He studied the disaster at St Francis in detail.

Los Angeles County coroner empanelled a jury to decide

whether criminal charges should be filed against anyone.

And this was a jury of engineers and geologists, it was learned people.

They decided that the dam was built in a bad location.

A damn should not have been built there.

It wasn't dug into the sides of the canyon very far,

it was only shallowly anchored into the walls.

The foundations on both sides were poor.

Another thing that is true of that dam,

it was designed to be 175 feet high

and store 30,000 acre-feet of water.

As it was being built, they added 10 feet of height to the dam twice.

So it ended up about 195 feet high and 30,000 acre-feet of water.

They did not make the dam bigger. They just made it taller.

And if you think about it, a dam that's not very thick

doesn't have as much dead weight to keep the water behind it.

So there was a lot of things that were wrong with that dam.

So, all of the things that were wrong with that dam,

were they essentially Mulholland's fault?

They were...

They were his fault.

And the jury found that he was at fault

and that the city and the department were at fault

for putting so much authority in the hands of one man.

Granted, he was a smart guy, with a lot of experience.

Had he ever designed a concrete dam before?

No, he didn't design either of these concrete dams,

they had a book that they got the dam designs from.

If you look at the transcript, they say, "Who designed the dam?"

No-one says, "I did."

Because no-one really designed it, they just took it out of a book.

Whoa, whoa, hang on. They just said,

"Let's see, here's one, let's copy this"?

Yeah, and maybe we need to make it a bit longer

or a little bit different radius or something,

but they essentially got the design of the two dams from a book.

So he was responsible, he took the blame.

Some people think maybe he shouldn't have,

but I think he should have, and he did himself. He was in charge.

The things that were done were done under his direction,

he was the man in charge.

Having hailed him a superhero, after the disaster

the people of Hollywood became nervous about the Mulholland dam.

Their faith in William had crumbled and they insisted

that half the water was drained from the reservoir above their city.

You know, this town that Mulholland helped to build

loves a Hollywood ending. They love that happy end to the story.

And, for me, the Mulholland story, it hasn't got that ending.

No, it doesn't, unfortunately.

It's a sad story with a sad ending that he had this great career,

all these wonderful accomplishments - the aqueduct,

the water supply, the public service.

And then, he just...

It was something beyond him.

The building of the dam that failed,

it was beyond his knowledge and his ability.

It was within his ability and decision-making

to have it turn out differently.

And maybe a dam should never have been built there, of any kind.

But he was the man in charge

when that dam was built and when it failed,

so that's the end of his career, that large, large failure.

What they learned from the collapse

had a profound effect on dam building around the world.

And many dams were redesigned, including the great Hoover Dam.

William was broken-hearted

and stated publicly that he wished he'd been killed on that day also.

The events impacted on his health,

and he retired the year after the disaster.

He died seven years later.

My Aunt Katy was 12 when he died.

And she remembers going to the Rotunda in the Los Angeles City Hall

where William Mulholland lay in state,

and thousands of people walked by to view him.

And she told me that there were these old, grizzled,

hard-working men who filed by.

And she said, before that day, she'd never seen a grown man cry.

These...hard-working labourers respected him so much,

they called him the Chief, and they cried as they walked by.

I knew I wasn't going to get a happy ending,

I knew it wasn't going to be straightforward, but...

..I thought I was going to get to a point in my own head

where I was going to be able to say,

"A-ha, I've found it out, and so now, with my big brain

"and all this information, ladies and gentlemen, he is this."

And he is all of it.

And you can't separate the good, and you can't separate the bad.

And you can't for a second turn around and say,

"I'm going to trade off these people's lives

"that died in a dam that he ordered up out of a book."

And...this city is still here and...

It, um...

..it's almost like it's life, isn't it?

It's almost like that's the way things are,

it's never black and white.

But, um...

I'm glad I did it, you know. I'm glad I actually went and found it all out.

And if someone says to me...

.."Mulholland was the man that stole the water,"

I'll probably fight them in a bar over that.

If they, um...

If they say he was the man that killed those people in the dam,

I'd probably have to agree.

And yet...

And yet I'm proud of him.

You know, this city wasn't meant to be here, and he...

he made that happen.

And I think back, I think back to growing up in Dundrum

and my dad fixing burst water mains.

And I think about my grandad in the Mourne Mountains,

bringing water to people.

And he did it better than anybody - William Mulholland.