"No Watercourse Became so Enraged as the Santa Ana River"

"Many watercourses made quick work of the flood control structures that, against the streams' natural inclination to wander across flood plains, sought to confine them to a narrow channel. In the southeastern San Fernando Valley, for instance, the Los Angeles River overtopped its levee and cut new bends near Griffith Park, destroying several buildings on the Warner Bros. studio lot. And even where the flood control structures held, they tended to exacerbate the flooding; as rain fell on newly developed and hence recently paved land, the levees blocked runoff from reaching their outlet to the sea, inundating residential neighborhoods and industrial areas adjacent to the rivers."

At KCET's "Lost LA," Nathan Masters describes the "Southern California Deluge of 1938."