[ATTW-L] film of historic accident

[Dragga, Sam]

A 12-minute silent film of a 1913 disaster could initiate a class discussion of how tragic accidents are recorded and reported.

On May 24, 1913, in Long Beach, California, a public celebration of Empire Day (commemorating the birth of Queen Victoria) brought thousands of people to the city auditorium at the ocean shoreline for a program of festive music as well as speeches by city officials and visiting dignitaries. The double-decker wooden walkway leading to the auditorium—on which scores of families stood waiting for admission to the auditorium—collapsed and dropped people from the upper level 20 feet on to people waiting on the lower level, who dropped 10 more feet to the beach. Thirty-eight people were killed (children, women, and men) and 150 injured.

For more information about the disaster itself (including a list of the deceased), visit http://www.cemeteryguide.com/gotw-empireday.html.

Film of the celebration and following disaster was later compiled (no copyright date) with expository intertitles noting the deliberate exclusion of the collapse itself as well as images of deceased or injured victims. The film does include several minutes of the same city locations in 1937, evidently to emphasize how Long Beach survived the disaster and prospered in the years following (without mention of the intervening 1933 earthquake that killed 120 people).

The film is available at https://californiarevealed.org/islandora/object/cavpp%3A20610 (without audio description).  It could easily elicit incisive analysis of the film editor’s rhetorical and ethical choices in putting together this record of the disaster. The film could also generate opportunities for compare/contrast exercises with video reports of analogous engineering/building failures.

Sam

Sam Dragga
Professor Emeritus
Texas Tech University
sam.dragga at ttu.edu
1-806-543-6099

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