Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever

by Geoff Williams

  Still, as bad as things were in Paducah, it was much worse in nearby Cairo, Illinois, which is why Paducah, a southern Kentucky town, was quickly becoming a rescue center. Situated on the Ohio River just a stone’s throw away from Illinois and adjacent to Missouri and Tennessee, Paducah had enough resources that the U.S. military ordered a lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers to take every power boat they could find and three barges and make haste for Cairo.

  The military’s instincts were apparently spot-on. The remaining canoes, rafts, and the like were enough to save everyone in town, except for one inebriated man who fell out of a boat and into the current. There’s a good lesson here for everyone. Floods and drinking heavily do not mix.

  April 2, Dayton, Ohio

  Despite the waters finally disappearing, the city was still taking stock of what was ahead of them, and authorities were doing everything, from trying to reunite families, to ensuring looting didn’t become a problem, to avoiding an epidemic breaking out. People were on edge. C. J. Becker, a prominent real estate agent, had been using his car to help ferry people in and out of the city, and overall was just being a good citizen when a friend of his joked and asked, “How much are you getting for wearing out your tires and machine?”

  “Thirty-five dollars a day,” Becker said good-naturedly. He should have added: “Don’t I wish.”

  A little later, Becker was stopped by a soldier who took him to a Major Hubler of the Ohio National Guard. The major wanted Becker to explain why he was running a sightseeing service, charging people thirty-five dollars a day to take them to see the hardest-hit areas of the flood.

  It took several hours and signatures of people who knew Becker, before the real estate agent could convince the military that he was joking and wasn’t some sort of sleazebag making a buck off the flood.

  The city gradually was coming to life, however. Historian Judith Sealander, who wrote the book Grand Plans: Business Progressivism and Social Change in Ohio’s Miami Valley tells of how in the aftermath of the flood, Dayton sent out committee volunteers and soldiers to conduct house-to-house inspections, an operation that reached every home and business in the city, with the goal of taking anyone with a communicable disease to a hospital.

  “Groceries, bakeries, restaurants and schools were only allowed to reopen after passing a rigorous inspection and disinfection,” writes Sealander, who then refers to a project Patterson created once it was apparent that his factory couldn’t keep flood victims there forever. “The tent city refugee camp built on donated NCR property included electric lights, sewer lines, showers and flush toilets. Ten cleaning stations dotted around the flooded regions of the city offered homeowners free lime, chloride of lime, and cresol, along with instructions explaining how to use these chemicals to whitewash basements and disinfect floors, walls, and furniture.”

  April 4, Dayton, Ohio

  A ten-hour downpour in Dayton did nothing to create a new flood, but it also did nothing for people’s nerves, nor did it help alleviate the problem of further damage to people’s homes, businesses, and health in the already-waterlogged city.

  April 5, throughout the nation

  Naturally, and not for the first time, the national conversation started toward the idea of flood prevention. Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, who discussed flood prevention in his book Progressive Principles, released just the year before when he unsuccessfully tried to wrest the nomination from President Taft, got the ball rolling, writing an article that appeared in an early April 1913 issue of The Outlook: “The Ohio Floods: Can Such Calamities be Prevented?”

  After citing the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the Great Baltimore fire of 1904, Roosevelt noted that the country was excellent when it came to spending money to help flood victims, but not so excellent at spending money on flood prevention. He brought up the flood of the previous year, noting, ““During the spring and summer of 1912, hundreds of farms along the Mississippi River, from Cairo to the Gulf, were flooded because of the inadequacy of a levee system, unsupplemented by source-stream control, to keep great floods within the channel of the river. More than one hundred thousand persons were driven from their homes, and some were drowned. Homes, buildings, agricultural implements, corn, forage, crops, cattle, horses, and hogs were destroyed in large numbers, and the wild animal life taken by the floods cannot be computed. Health problems of dangerous importance were created, and the injury to business and commerce aggregated hundreds of millions of dollars.”

  Then Roosevelt went in for the kill: “In order that the suffering by human beings might be reduced, the Federal Government promptly appropriated $6 million for the purchase of food and for the repair of broken levees. But not one cent was appropriated for the solution of the monster economic problem involved, or for the correction of the fundamental evil that has been created through changes wrought by man in the watershed of the Nation’s greatest drainage system.”

  Technology might help matters, at least one expert posited. The head of the physics department at the University of Iowa, Dr. G. W. Stewart, challenged the nation to think about building more wireless stations and in a sense forecasting radio. Just as the Titanic had demonstrated how wireless communication could be invaluable in bringing help and sending out warnings during an emergency, the Great Flood of 1913 certainly offered another example of how much it was needed.

  “Suppose Omaha and Council Bluffs had been cut off from the outside world and a great fire had started Easter night,” speculated Stewart to the press, thinking how Morse code could be adopted for the modern world. “A wireless message, ‘C.Q.D.,’ flashed to Sioux City or Lincoln would have started special trains carrying fire engines to the stricken cities hours before they otherwise would have started. If Dayton and other cities in the flood region had been equipped with wireless, the great loss of life might have been averted.”

  Editorials in newspapers across the country obviously had made their opinions known as well. Some used the flood to remind critics of coastal cities that we’re all in this together (“No section of the country can claim immunity from storms or from danger of storm damage,” noted the Galveston News). The editors at the San Francisco Call probably just wanted to point out that they were grateful for their own weather but ultimately seemed to suggest the rest of the nation come out to the Sunshine State (“In California of the kindly skies on the same day, fleeting sunshine or warm, gentle rains for coast, valley and foothill; in the higher mountains more snow to guarantee full streams and crops for the summer to come”).

  Some papers championed self-reliance. The Chicago Inter Ocean pointed out that Omaha had refused outside financial aid, and that “St. Louis took care of her tornado losses alone,” and that “San Francisco disposed with outside help at the first possible moment. So did Chicago in 1871. So do all American towns when ‘trouble’ comes to them.”

  Other papers urged that this was the time for everyone to come and help each other, like the Detroit Free Press, which put out an editorial right after the tornado and before the floods: “The President speaks for the nation when he asks the stricken city of Omaha, ‘Can we help in any way?’ The disaster that has overtaken our fellow citizens is one that might come to any of our cities. What is in the power of Americans at this time will be gladly given.”

  The Middletown Daily Times Press, of Middletown, New York, saw the problem as one that was much of our own making. “Just as the recent tornado losses have been at least aggravated by the tendency to erect unsubstantial buildings, so the awful floods of the Ohio Valley may be largely traced to the work of man,” declared an editorial. “Wherever the balance of forces is upset, Nature sooner or later takes revenge.”

  The Middletown Daily Times Press then made its larger point: “The ruthless sacrifice of forest growth, turning vast acres of soil sponge into hard runways, is a familiar cause of flood damage. But even if the losses at Dayton and other cities were not due to any large extent to this reason, other consequences of
man’s acts do increase hazard. Men build factories and railroad tracks and bridges and dams along a stream, tending to restrict the natural outlet of the water. Their mills let loose debris and silt that fill up the river beds. A still greater factor is the erosion from the cultivated fields, which is far greater than that from the original uncultivated soil.”

  April 6, Equality, Illinois

  The Gallatin Coal and Coke Company’s two mines were completely flooded. Anyone around the mine fervently hoping that it might not be ruined had their ambitions dashed with the first explosion, sending water shooting two hundred feet, for the next three minutes, sending coal, cars, mine props, and timber spraying into the air.

  Silence followed, but for only a few more minutes, until another explosion that finished off a building, the engine house, and the tipples, the part of the mine where the coal cars were tipped and emptied of their coal.

  Anyone who thought, “Well, at least the east mine may still be okay,” also had their hopes stripped away. An explosion soon took down that mine as well.

  April 7, Frankfort, Indiana

  Bodies were still turning up. Roy Rothenberger, who was one of the first victims of the flood, was finally discovered on the creek bottom near where his boat was overturned. Searchers were still looking for his brother, Roscoe.

  April 10, Wilson, Arkansas

  The flood was still showing its formidable power further and further away from its original epicenter. At a levee near Wilson, about a hundred African-American laborers were doing their best to keep the dam from bursting. They couldn’t; and in one Associated Press article, there was a catty aside, typical of the times, of course, that suggested that it was all the fault of the men:

  “The levee near Wilson, Ark., went out late this evening said to be due to the desertion of about 100 negro laborers today.”

  If desertion means running for your life, so you aren’t drowned as a dam comes crashing down on you, then, sure, guilty as charged. Residents in the area may have felt the men deserted their post, or perhaps the anonymous reporter simply felt he was reporting exactly what had happened and not attempting any snark since he does, in fact, observe in the next sentence that the laborers “kept up the fight to the last minute.”

  The men were all able to reach land high enough to escape the rushing waters, but the cabins they lived in were not so lucky. The men watched their homes and all the trees in the valley disappear into the swirl.

  April 11, New Castle, Pennsylvania

  For weeks, there had been murmurs of police officers demanding money before ferrying flood victims to dry land. On a Friday afternoon, in Mayor Walter Tyler’s office, a hearing was held to determine just what had happened. Many witnesses were brought in, as was the coroner. There had been murmurs, a whisper campaign if you will, that perhaps Thomas Thomas was the police officer taking money from rescue victims. He had, after all, been out there a lot, saving lives.

  But the coroner threw cold water on the idea when he reported the money found in Thomas’s pockets after his body was retrieved. He had $2.01 on him. Several witnesses fingered William Kerr as one of the men who had taken money, but it apparently wasn’t enough evidence for the mayor. Or maybe Mayor Walter Tyler gave Kerr the benefit of the doubt since he had tried to save Thomas Thomas’s life.

  Kerr hung on to his job, but two other police officers were sacked, and a fireman was suspended.

  April 14, New Orleans, Louisiana

  A bloated corpse was discovered in the Mississippi River at a plantation. The body was five feet and six inches tall and the man estimated to be thirty-five years old, and while nobody knew who he was, they believed he was a flood victim and that they could identify where he was from. Inside was a card from where the man apparently got his dry cleaning, well over eight hundred miles away. It read: Williams and Brown, cleaners. Walnut Street. Cincinnati.

  April 16, Dayton

  While NCR initially told the rest of the country to send food and clothes and not money, they had now changed their message. The papers were now quoting John Patterson who said that money “is urgently required for putting our city in a condition to prevent the outbreak of serious disease and to rehabilitate the thousands, many of whom lost their homes entirely and all of whom lost their household and personal effects.”

  April 21, Mayersville, Mississippi

  Just north of the town, there was a break in yet another levee, and soon four very populated counties, Sharkey, Isaquena, Washington, and Warren, full of cotton farms and farmers and work-hands, were inundated. Before the day was up, another fifteen thousand people were rendered homeless.

  April 28, Louisiana

  As the flood made its way toward New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, some 222 miles upriver many residents were stuck on roofs and second floors, and the property damage was high. A dike gave way, and the Mississippi River came pouring out, swamping the Tensas and Concord parishes, forming a lake nine hundred square miles and driving two hundred thousand people out of their homes. It was twenty feet deep in some places, and the force of the water literally knocked some railroad trains off their tracks.

  April 29, Louisiana

  Odds are, when a 900-square-mile lake forms out of nowhere, thousands of people are going to die, but incredibly, twenty-four hours later, officials in communities like Vidalia and Ferriday were stunned and pleased that the death toll was so far light. Two people—African-American, but that’s all that’s known—died in the flooding. Plenty of people were at risk of drowning or catching a disease or starving, however, which is why a relief camp had been set up, and every available steamer had been called for duty to take flood victims to the doctors, nurses, and American Red Cross officials waiting for them in Natchez, Mississippi. Meanwhile, other communities down the river were eyeing the Mississippi and other rivers warily. In Clayton, Louisiana, located on the Tensas River, the water was already in the city, ten feet deep and rising.

  April 30, Natchez, Mississippi

  Rescue parties saved many people on this day, but they couldn’t save two mothers and nine young children on the roof, all of them screaming and begging for someone to come and get them. Two oarsmen in boats nearby wanted to desperately, but their boats were full of passengers already, and to bring anyone else on board would threaten to tip them over and risk everyone’s lives.

  All they could do was row away and watch and hope that they could return or send more boats.

  But it was not to be. The inside of the house was full of water, and the force was just too great. Suddenly, the incomprehensible happened. While the oarsmen and their terrified passengers looked on, the home toppled over, and the screaming mothers and crying children all plunged into the river and to their deaths.

  May 1, Poydras, Louisiana

  Approximately sixteen miles south of New Orleans, the levee began to cave away a few minutes after five in the morning. Something had to be done quickly, or risk losing the community. The solution staggers the imagination.

  Within twenty minutes, a farmer and about twelve African-American men arrived to find about two inches of water spilling over the levee.

  Sandbags—two thousand of them—were on their way, but within minutes it wouldn’t matter. The water was coming.

  One newspaper article described the black men as willing, and the Atlanta Constitution-Journal called them “heroic,” but given that they had come with their white boss, and no white men stepped up to do what these men were about to do, you have to assume the worst, that these men were either forced or told that their jobs depended on stopping the water. But it’s also easy to assume the best, that these men simply did what they knew had to be done and that nobody else was brave enough to try, in order to save their families, friends, and townspeople.

  In any case, two twelve-inch wooden boards were laid on the dirt levee, right where the water was dribbling over, and then the twelve men climbed onto them, effectively becoming part of the levee. They were “human sandbags,” as t
he papers put it, and the twelve men were at risk that any of them might be, at any moment, sucked into the river to meet a grisly end. Their bodies packed tightly into the part of the levee that was breaking away, the men kept the water in the Mississippi River where it belonged. Meanwhile, about a hundred black and white men filled sacks and carried them to the twelve human sandbags, so they could fortify the weakest part of the levee. The idea was that once it was secure, they could begin leaving their posts and replacing themselves with actual sandbags. It took an hour, but eventually all of the men were able to leave safely, and two thousand bags of dirt were in place. The levee held.

  May 2, Clayton, Louisiana

  The steamer Concordia, 156 feet long and 850 tons, was making its way down the Tenas River and taking flood refugees to safety when irony reared its tragic head. The captain lost control and the vessel’s right bow was slammed into the north pier of the iron railroad’s drawbridge, just two feet above the river. Captain Sam Pennywitt, an experienced river pilot, was evidently trying to go around the drawbridge when he lost control and crashed into it.

  Two men on the deck, 73-year-old Ambrose Denton Geoghegan, a veteran riverboat captain along for the ride, and William Grimes, in his mid-thirties and the chief clerk of the steamer, were instantly thrown off the boat and never seen alive again. A black man whose name has been lost to history was also on the deck, as was a planter named Maurice Block. Both made a valiant leap from the steamer’s deck to the drawbridge. The African-American landed in the water between the bridge and the boat, which was hurled back into the bridge by the current. The extremely unfortunate man was then crushed to death as a piece of flying timber from the steamer flew into the air, hitting Block, breaking his arm and injuring a shoulder.

  As the boat began to sink, there was a mass exodus as crew and passengers leapt for the bridge, and others, tossed off the boat and into the water by the waves, attempted to swim to shore. Incredibly, when it was all over and after the steamer was carried away by the current and eventually sank, 107 survivors remained to tell the tale. But twenty-two people, twenty of them African-Americans, and most of them women and children, did not. They were among the last, and may have been the last, victims of the Great Flood of 1913, a misnomer if there ever was one. The Great Flood of 1913 was heartbreaking, horrifying, and horrible. It was unfair, often tragic, dangerous, and deadly. It was anything but great.