Near Tragedy Marked by Joyful Christmas Reunions

By Bonnie Kane, Ridge Route Communities Museum Historian

One of California’s greatest engineering achievements, the California Aqueduct, inched its way through our mountains back in the late 1960s.

To move water from the San Joaquin Valley through the Tehachapi Mountains it needed to be pumped up some 2000 feet and through a series of tunnels.

The building of the tunnels is an amazing story in itself, but 40 years ago this month another story was unfolding that brought the residents of this mountain to their knees.

In those days, many referred to this area as the ‘Hill.’ The Hill and the mountains to the east of Interstate-5 had been blanketed with one of those three-foot snowfalls, bringing traffic to a standstill.

This may not have had any bearing on what was about to happen, but the additional moisture in the hills might have compounded the problem. The soil was very unstable as the tunnels passed through numerous fault lines.

Then, at 5 a.m. on December 21, seventeen workers and a state inspector were trapped behind 125 feet of earth.

"Sandhogs" began digging their way to the men immediately and the trapped workers began to dig as well. Earth bore specialists were rushed in under California Highway Patrol escort, a huge auger device was sent to the scene, helicopters hovered overhead and even Governor Ronald Reagan visited the site.

With temperatures well below freezing, the teams worked into the night and through the very basic method of digging toward each other. The men were reached just after midnight the next morning. None were injured and the group was found to have plenty of air.

The Mountain Enterprise of December 28, 1967 reported: "Maintaining a sense of humor throughout the entire ordeal, the men had a pool going to guess how long it would take to gain their freedom. The thought of never being rescued was put completely out of their minds from the first. Asked if they saw the governor, they said "No, but he would have gained a few votes if he had just talked to us through the communications tube, but he did not."

The newspaper added that the disaster was the second major cave-in involving the same crews in the past two months.

If there are readers who remember this event, please contact the Ridge Route Communities museum at (661) 245-7747 and share what you remember. Ask for Bonnie Kane, and we’ll put your contribution into the history files-and possibly into my next book, which will include a detailed story of the building of the Aqueduct through our mountains.

This is part of the December 21, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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