At 11:57 Monday night, March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam gave way, resulting in one of the worst civil engineering catastrophes in U.S. history.
Three hours and 12 minutes after the breach, the flood reached Santa Paula.
By 4:30 Tuesday morning, with telephone and telegraph lines down, officials had turned to a 17-year-old boy, his Morse-code key, and his rudimentary homemade amateur radio station, call sign 6BYQ.
The devastation downstream had been unimaginable. A towering wall of water roared down San Francisquito Canyon, destroying nearly everything in its path. As the flood turned west into the Santa Clara River Valley, it continued toward Piru, Fillmore and Santa Paula, ultimately taking more than 430 lives.
11:57 p.m. — The dam collapses.
12:45 a.m. — The flood exits San Francisquito Canyon and enters the Santa Clara River Valley.
2:25 a.m. — The flood reaches the Fillmore Bridge.
3:10 a.m. — The flood reaches Santa Paula.
Around 4:30 a.m. — Seventeen-year-old Charles Primmer, amateur radio station 6BYQ, is at his homemade radio trying to get Santa Paula’s emergency traffic out.
Before the destruction reached Fillmore and Santa Paula, emergency telephone warnings had gone out. Charles’ father, Santa Paula Fire Chief Sam Primmer, joined State Motorcycle Officer Thornton Edwards, Santa Paula Police Officer Stanley Baker and others racing through town warning residents to get to higher ground.
Their efforts saved lives. Despite tremendous destruction in and around Santa Paula, contemporary accounts put the city’s death toll at approximately 18.
But now there was another problem. The flood had torn through the phone and telegraph lines. Santa Paula desperately needed outside help, and had no way to ask for it.
That’s where a 17-year-old high school kid enters the story.
Charles had built his own amateur radio equipment. His transmitter ran all of 7½ watts — about one-tenth the power of an old-fashioned light bulb — powered by batteries.
And somehow, it was enough.
Charles put out a call. Nearly 300 miles away, in Oakland, another amateur radio operator heard 6BYQ and answered. Suddenly, Santa Paula had a communications link to the outside world.
Messages requesting urgently needed Red Cross assistance could be relayed to San Francisco. Officials who initially doubted what this kid and his little homemade radio could accomplish soon stood beside him, feeding him messages to send.
In ham-radio language, Charles was “handling traffic.” And he kept handling it. He stayed at the radio through that first exhausting day, then stayed home from school for the next three days to keep working the emergency net. The May 1928 issue of QST, the magazine of the American Radio Relay League, reported that roughly 50 official messages were handled, not including replies, press and personal traffic.
Think about the symmetry. Sam Primmer used a motorcycle to get the warning into Santa Paula. His son used a radio to get the call for help out. At 17 years old.
Today, there’s a statue in Santa Paula commemorating the heroic warning ride of Officers Edwards and Baker. There is no statue to Charles Primmer, station 6BYQ.
Most of us know something about the St. Francis Dam catastrophe, one of the worst civil engineering disasters in American history. Far fewer remember the kid at the radio.
Amateur radio persists nearly a century later. I’m a ham myself, station AK6HU. My interest started when I was 12, back in 1968 — a hobby that taught me to learn, build, experiment and create, and kept me out of at least some of the teenage trouble I might otherwise have found. Four years ago, now semi-retired, I got relicensed and built a modern station that puts me in touch with fellow hams around the world.
The equipment has changed almost beyond recognition from what Charles Primmer assembled in 1928. The underlying idea hasn’t. A radio, an antenna and an independent source of power can still communicate without a cell tower, cable connection or internet provider — which is why hams still train for emergencies today.
But there’s another reason Charles Primmer’s story matters. Young people need interests that build curiosity — things they can build, get wrong, fix, and things that connect them with people beyond the little screens in their hands. At 17, Charles had no idea the radio he’d built from inquisitiveness would suddenly matter to an entire community. Then one terrible night in March 1928, the phones went dead. And 6BYQ was still on the air.
Some heroes get statues. Some just get through and get it done.
If you’re interested for yourself or others, a great place to start in our own community is www.w6jw.org. You just might save a life someday. Or help build one.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
