This diary and collection of notes were prepared starting in late July, 1996, during the course of my investigation of the failure of the Pajaro River levees which had occurred in March of the previous year. I am going to show here how an engineering failure investigation is actually conducted. The viewer will soon see that the project is ongoing, idiosyncratic, and, so far, inconclusive. I welcome any suggestions or information you have.

[1] The Pajaro River rises in the south Santa Clara Valley near the fine mission of San Juan Bautista, thirty miles inland from the Pacific. It falls through the coastal Gabilan mountains then twists through a gentle valley of strawberries and apples flowing at last into Monterrey Bay a few miles north of the Salinas Valley. Unlike the Salinas the Pajaro is little changed over the past half century, and the farm workers and buildings and bums that John Steinbeck described in books like Tortilla Flat and East of Eden -- the first few paragraphs of which I am consciously imitating here --could as well describe the towns of Watsonville and Pajaro today.

[2] Sooner or later I will get a response form set up here but in the meanwhile you can reach me at meehan@blume.stanford.edu.