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As Crescenta Valley residents gathered to ring in the 1934 New Year, a cloudburst broke over Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains, unleashing a deluge on mountainsides denuded by recent fires. A roaring wall of rocks, mud and water crashed down the canyons, uprooting trees, tossing boulders and automobiles like toys and carving a path of destruction. Using painstaking research and heart-rending firsthand accounts, historian Art Cobery paints a picture of survival and redemption in the face of natural disaster, including the heroic efforts of eleven-year-old Marcie Warfield to save her father and younger brother, the devastating debris flow that claimed the lives of refugees and aid workers at the American Legion Hall and the selfless acts of neighbors caught in the storm of events.
About the author
Art Cobery is a retired high school history teacher and a founding member of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley. Mike Lawler is the President of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley. He produces a weekly Treasures of the Valley"? column and writes captions for a weekly photo feature "Crescenta Valley Then and Now"? in the Crescenta Valley Weekly. Pam Lawler is a third generation Glendalian, who grew up with the stories of the flood as seen by her mother in 1934."
