Deadly streams -- Part 8 (1959)

USGS map of affected areas in 1959.

If anything is common about flooding, it takes uncommon events to create the worst ones. As a rule, an ordinary winter will produce ordinary high water, which will run off in ordinary ways, in order to allow us to experience ordinary springs and summers.

When "extra" is added to "ordinary," we end up with floods like the ones that hit the Ohio-Indiana river basins in early 1959.

Those were the last major floods that Fairfield didn't endure but ultimately paid the price for having witnessed. We heard about it on the news.

Nasty stuff.

The Department of Interior, head groundskeeper for the U.S. Geological Survey, was prepared to research the outcome of a flood. All it needed was the flood.

Those extraordinary events began in December. Extremely cold, colder than it had been since the 1800's, the USGS report showed. And dry, much drier than usual, maybe drier than it had been in 4 decades. The rivers and creeks from Pennsylvania to Illinois were at pool stage. There just wasn't much water in them.

And they froze solid. The ground froze, deeply. And the freeze just got worse. Temperatures as much as 20 degrees below normal lingered for weeks in December. The ice on the rivers got deeper. Rivers that don't have much water in them tend to freeze more deeply.

Understandably, in previous years, the flooding had been such that soil and water management had been efficient in constructing dry reservoirs along the streams that reached back into western Pennsylvania, along the routes past Cleveland, southwest through Dayton, Hamilton, along the Miami River where it met the Whitewater ... and onto the Ohio. That would matter because the flood-control projects came with monitoring systems -- systems that would come into play after the 1959 horror show had ended.

Bone-chilling cold.

On January 13, the weather took a turn. A two-day rain came as the temperature suddenly rose. Rain came and trickled along the stone-solid ground, into the creeks. The creeks began to fill from the bottom up, raising the ice, cracking it ... and sending it into motion. Then it froze again.

A week later, the deluge came, breaking up the ice again and causing heavy snow to melt.

Rivers in north-central Indiana began to rise, the ice began to shift and ... finally it began to move. It was also moving in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And it was going where water goes -- downstream.

Indianapolis Times photo shows icy water
washing out S.R. 524  near Lagro in Wabash Co.

FYI: The ice, as it is wont to do, will move slowly downstream in the form of huge floes, piling up on itself as it negotiates bends in the river. At times, it will jam up and create an ice dam. When that happens, water behind it rises rapidly, often several feet within a few minutes. Flash flooding occurs. Then, the ice breaks up, roars on downstream ... and repeats the process again and again until the floes are broken up. Floes can be 20 feet square and 18 inches thick.

The USGS report:

"Heavy rains on January 20-21 exceeded 6 inches in a belt extending from the southwestern corner of Indiana through the southwestern corner of Ohio and into central Ohio."

Two weeks later, on Feb. 9, the rains came again. The rains that had soaked the soil two weeks earlier had saturated ... and it froze again. The February storm was located more to the north of the Whitewater Valley. Its impact spread southwest, away from Indianapolis, but it wrought havoc in many Indiana towns. The damage in the Whitewater Valley had already been done.

In summary:

"This intense rain falling on ice and frozen ground resulted in the greatest flooding in 46 years at numerous points on the Wabash River and may have exceeded the floods of 1913 at some points. The runoff was quick and was unretarded. ..."

The Miami River Basin, where the Miami Conservancy District had years earlier set into motion a series of flood-control measures, was in the area of intense rainfall in January 1959. "The five retarding basins of the Conservancy District minimized flood stages and damages on the main streams, but uncontrolled tributaries caused widespread damage. Some damage on the Miami River below the reservoirs was due to encroachment on the flood plain."

Major damage was done to homes, businesses, fields, railroad beds, and highways. Estimates of flood damage in Franklin County, which was one of the five counties in southern Indiana declared a disaster area by the Small Business Administration, averaged $1,600,000.

In the south end of Brookville, 200 residents were forced to evacuate when a levee on the East Fork broke.

The stage on the Whitewater at Brookville was the highest since 1913, according to local residents, but it was 11.2 feet lower than the 1913 peak stage. So, it was worse than 1937, apparently.

It was the broken levee that sent up the final call to build the dam.

Some data:

* Unusually high runoff of several small uncontrolled Miami River tributaries caused the peak flow of 108,000 cubic feet per second in the Miami River at Hamilton on the night of January 21, about 20 hours before the lower main-river peak.

*The town of Venice, Ohio, was almost entirely submerged. Industries were shut down in Hamilton, and 100 families were forced from their homes.

* In Middletown, Ohio, 100 homes were evacuated, and in the residential district, much damage was caused by a series of fires and explosions.

* Flooding occurred over the entire Whitewater River basin in January 1959, with the lower portions of the East Fork and the main stem of the Whitewater River receiving the heaviest flooding.

The end of Somerset

Ice jams along the Wabash and Salamonie Rivers backed up water, and flooded areas larger than would normally be inundated by discharges of similar magnitude. During the prevalence of ice floes on the Wabash River, ice jams covered about a 14-mile reach of the river, from Delphi to Georgetown.

Although it was feared that in the breakup of these ice jams. many of the Wabash bridges might be swept away, but this destruction failed to materialize. However, the damage to bridges, bridge approaches, houses, factories and livestock on the Wabash River and its tributaries was great.

Wabash was one of the hardest hit areas during the February flood. Families were evacuated from 115 homes, and 7 factories were surrounded by water when 40 city blocks on the south side of Wabash were inundated. Flash flooding from ice dams on two small creeks, one in the city and one in a small suburb south of the city, trapped residents without warning.

In 1964, the Salamonie Reservoir project began, forcing the eventual relocation of the town of Somerset, Ind.

In all, 1959 was the most significant flood of the 20th century because it provided incredible data on water flow. The USGS, in its report on the flood, provided extremely detailed information on gauge readings at more than 250 locations in Indiana and Illinois.

The government would use that data to move forward on a final proposal for building the dam at Brookville and other sites around Indiana. So far, we've seen nothing like 1959 since.

I've included two USGS charts that shows the complexity of detail in gathering data from the many sites in the flood's footprint. -- John

The Brookville flood of 1959

Deadly streams -- Part 7 (1937)

Nowhere to go: Huntington, W.Va.

Despite our best efforts, flooding will continue. Build a dam here, dredge a creek there, install a levee ... ranging from the very first flood, sometime in the B.C. era of Noah, all the way up to the one that soaked somebody's basement last Friday ... yes, nature makes the rules.

When it rains, the river rises. And in December of 1936, the problem started. Lots of snowfall in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. Sudden warm spell, temperatures in the 60s, the snow began to melt.

In January, it began to rain. Eighteen days later, the Ohio River at Evansville had risen from 33 feet to 54 feet, spread into the city and ... all hell had broken loose.

Tributaries feeding into the mighty Ohio and Mississippi rivers frequently outgrew their banks, flooding fields and low-lying areas of towns that were platted by people long dead, perhaps smarter than the ones who continued to live in them despite the annual risk. ("Most days, it's great here.")

The Ohio-Mississippi flood of Jan. 26-27 of 1937 rivaled the 1913 tragedy in its devastation, though the 1913 flood is considered more devastating because of its larger geography. But 1937 features some awe-inspiring statistics.

The river at Cincinnati, at the height of the 1937 flood, was somewhere near the 80-foot mark, or a full 14 feet higher than in 1913, and 25 feet above flood stage. What this meant probably depended on where people lived. It was raging, full of debris, burning oil drums ... creatures, large and small. And boats being sent downstream at incredible speed.

Oddly, the crest of the flood in 1913 was less than that of 1884.

A Wikipedia report:

Coney Island. Thrilling ride, right?

"The scale of the 1937 flood was so unprecedented that civic and industrial groups lobbied national authorities to create a comprehensive plan for flood control. The plan involved creating more than 70 storage reservoirs to reduce Ohio River flood heights. Not fully completed by the Army Corps of Engineers until the early 1940s, the new facilities have drastically reduced flood damages since."

Drastically remains the operative word. No month in Cincinnati history ever recorded more rainfall than did January, 1937.

A blog essay from Evansville (unattributed) reveals:

"With crashing suddenness there swept down upon the Tri-State district a major calamity which stands alone in the annals of the Ohio valley. All news gave way to stories of the rushing waters which poured into basements, boiled from the sewers and wholly disrupted life as it is generally found in Evansville. Tell City was paralyzed. Cannelton was hard hit. Other communities along the Ohio sent out desperate pleas for aid."

Elsewhere:

* At Harrisburg, Ill., the Ohio River's reach was nearly 30 miles inland.

* About 60 percent of Louisville, Ky., was flooded. About two-thirds of the population was forced to evacuate. Some areas of the city simply disappeared.

* A few communities along the Ohio were so badly damaged that they never recovered. One was New Amsterdam, Ind.

* Indiana recorded no deaths as a result of the 1937 flood but set up a flood control commission anyway because the problem needed to be studied by people who didn't get flooded.

* Fairfield, Ind., was never threatened. Its bridge was never challenged.

The 1937 disaster was one of a string of terrible events to strike America in the midst of the Great Depression. More than 20 percent of the country was enduring the last shreds of the most significant drought in history, a period known as the Dust Bowl and immortalized in the novel/movie "The Grapes of Wrath."

Not much was going right for the country, which was also staring down the evil sneer of a despot named Adolf Hitler. Off to the left, Japan was invading Manchuria.

The Tennessee Valley Authority had been set up in 1933 to provide electricity and flood control in the areas south of Kentucky. Much of that was to address flooding on the Mississippi, which had its own problems, the worst coming in 1928.

Flooding was normal. It still is.

But it took 1937 to force Congress's hand on flood control in the Ohio Valley.

Brookville Reservoir was authorized by Congress in 1938 following the 1937 floods. But World War II and the Korean War delayed appropriation of sufficient money to build it. In 1960, Indiana agreed to pay 22.5 per cent of the cost of construction of water supply features of the project.

Why did 1960 matter?

Ah ... there was a flood in 1959.

Next, that one gets a look.

Sideline tidbit:

In March 1997, the Ohio River crested just under 65 feet, submerging low-lying Cincinnati streets and some areas of the river cities in northern Kentucky. The worst area hit was Falmouth, Ky. in Pendleton County. There, the Licking River spilled over its banks and submerged much of the town.


“We started getting water in the basement of my father’s furniture store in Covington,” recalled 94-year-old Dorothy Seigel of Kennedy Heights. “But we always did when it flooded. So, we didn't think too much of it.”

(Whatever, Dorothy.)

Spring Grove Avenue, Cincinnati 1937

Deadly streams -- Part 6

Dayton library photo, 1913

As the flood of 1913 gradually eased its way out of the public's view (and some estimates contended that the March tragedy wasn't completely over until sometime in May) ... talk turned to flood control.

Sadly, the unique weather event that created the 1913 disaster could scarcely have been prevented. Perhaps some of its impact could have been modified with better preparation, better soil and water management, useful and practical river levees and more attention to how and where people lived and built their businesses. Better bridges would have helped.

All that to avoid what has become known as the 100-year flood, one that happened 102 years ago this week (as of this blog entry).

Actually, the 100-year flood came again in 1928 on the Mississippi River, and again in 1937 on the Ohio and Whitewater.

That was not supposed to happen.

In the years following the disaster, states across America acted to prevent a repeat occurrence. Indiana established a flood control commission, Pennsylvania approved the construction of new dams and flood control legislation in Texas and California was suddenly enacted.

Great ideas.

I can't find that Indiana's "commission" actually achieved much, but it was a wonderful thought. The problem was, in 1937, the flood came from somewhere else -- as it usually does.

Namely, Ohio.

Ohio's attempts to control flooding on the Miami and Ohio rivers were more interesting and peculiar. Dayton is generally considered to have suffered more damage than any other city along the brutal path of the Great Flood of 1913.

Geoff Williams, via the History Channel, tells in his "Washed Away" book:

Library of Congress, 1913 Dayton

"Perhaps no city was hit as hard as Dayton, where nearly a foot of rain fell upon the city. The Miami River rushed into the downtown area, and the floodwaters in some areas were 20 feet deep. Stranded citizens signaled messages with flags from the roofs of downtown buildings. In some neighborhoods, homes floated off their foundations, and residents jumped from one drifting house to another until they found a structure on dry land. In other sections of Dayton, the water rose so quickly that residents could only escape by scaling telephone poles and carefully crawling along the wires."

Stories of women carrying babies while tightrope-walking the power lines seem numerous, more difficult to prove.

"When the water receded, wrecked automobiles, capsized streetcars and dead horses littered Dayton’s streets. Property damage topped more than $2 billion in present-day terms, and more than 360 people perished."

Pressure mounted in the succeeding months to find a solution to prevent flooding, discounting the fact that Dayton's levee on the Miami was probably too weak to be of any value and probably, as a result, contributed to the loss of life because it presented a false sense of security.

Archibald Shaw, writing his Dearborn County history in 1915, discussed some of the chat that went on in Ohio, and plans that had yet to be enacted when Shaw finished his work.

"Hard-hit cities like Dayton and Hamilton keenly felt the onus of the flood. It was proposed by eminent engineers to construct enormous dry reservoirs for catching and holding the water back until the natural force of the rise had spent itself. This, it was argued, would act as a brake on the rise and prevent the terrible devastation of such a rush of water as attended the March flood of 1913."

Shaw said the plan, which wasn't universally popular, involved buying lowland farms and converting them into catch basins for floodwater. One would assume that nobody who seriously proposed this plan had any concept of the volume of water that traversed the Ohio Valley during that flood. If you can do the math, it's a lot of water.

A bunch of water. Seventy feet high. A half-mile wide.

"At the time this is written it is practically certain that the plan will be consummated. Committees have been appointed and trustees, to serve for varying terms of years, have been selected to direct the work."

Ohio eventually did act on flood control, setting up a conservancy program that was intended to study and plan for such events.

The Ohio plan initially aimed to do three things:

• Improve river channel by dredging, widening and in some places straightening out the river’s course.
• Build upstream dry dams on four of the Miami River’s five tributaries, all of them protecting Hamilton and Middletown.
• Preserve the flood plain so that all land above the dams would remain green spaces with deed restrictions to prevent future construction.

As time went on, its role expanded.

To some end, the conservancy district programs have had enormous impact.

History.com writes:

"The communities around Dayton established the Miami Conservancy District and hired engineer Arthur Ernest Morgan to design a system of dams and levees that took five years to build. In the 1930s, Morgan applied his flood control knowledge to manage the larger Tennessee River system after President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him the first chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Morgan’s greatest legacy may be that since his flood control system for Dayton was completed in 1922, the city has never again been deluged as it was in 1913."

The Whitewater Valley, less protected by legislation than by luck, would suffer again in future years. Finally, the government had endured enough.

And Fairfield went away.

Deadly streams -- Part 5

Dayton's levee collapsed. The city was flooded.

Geoff Williams, author of a narrative study called "Washed Away," introduces some insight to the 1913 disaster that set in motion a national conversation about flood control.

"The flood disaster became very localized. Waterlogged cities adopted the flood as part of their local history, and so instead of becoming known as the Great Flood of 1913, folks around Dayton, Ohio, would talk of the Great Dayton Flood. Residents in Columbus would speak of the Great Columbus Flood... . While it was a national tragedy, or at least a semi-national apocalyptic catastrophe, hitting over a dozen states and terrifying friends and family across the nation, the flood tended to be thought of as a neighborhood event instead of as part of a national narrative."

If the 1913 flood was nothing short of extraordinary, it was the culmination of a series of natural events that could not have been scripted better by Hollywood.

Williams introduces a component that would have been laughed off the table back in the day:

El Nino.

It refers to a weather phenomenon that occurs irregularly but has profound effect on the jetstream, rainfall patterns, a whole host of atmospheric movements.

The winter of 1912-13 came equipped with an El Nino.

A Wikipedia analysis of the entire series of weather events mentions a blizzard that struck on March 21, affecting several states across the northern Plains. That same day, a string of tornadoes ripped through the South.

The same day, strong winds raked the central part of Indiana.

Warning of something ahead, or just a freaky day of weather?

1913 Omaha-Council Bluffs tornado
(Historic Omaha.com)

A day later, on Easter Sunday, more tornadoes across Nebraska and Iowa, one of them an EF-4 twister that gouged a 6-mile-long slit through Omaha.

On Monday, the storm would get worse. The bizarre weather patterns had snatched moisture from the South, cold wind from the North, more cold moisture and strong wind from the West ... and it all came together over Scratch Gravel, Ind.

Then it began to rain.

The backbreaker was that the strong winds in the West and across Indiana had done significant damage to the telephone and telegraph lines. Communication was spotty at best. In some places, nobody knew what was happening.

Writes Williams in "Washed Away":

"Had those telephone and telegraph poles and wires remained standing, historian Trudy E. Bell has suggested that the U.S. Weather Bureau might have been better able to collect information or send warnings to neighboring communities and come to a quicker understanding of what was befalling the country."

The flood would still have happened. Perhaps a few lives might have been saved, though it's doubtful. Nobody could grasp the scope of the storm.

"Weather forecasts were far from useless in those days," Williams says, "but in this instance they might as well have been. In Washington, the bureau issued an alert that a 'severe storm is predicted to pass over the East Tuesday and Wednesday'."

The East posted storm warnings from Maine to North Carolina. The bureau predicted cold weather for the Ohio Valley ... and some rain showers.

Nobody had mentioned that a tornado had crashed into Terre Haute, Ind.

The world was unaware of what was developing.

To be fair, it's likely the events were too complex for 1913 weather technology, much of which was reliant on reports that were more than a day old. The airplane was something that the Germans were preparing to use in the Great War. Many Americans were still on horseback. NASA was four letters that didn't spell anything.

By Tuesday, March 25, most cities, including Dayton and Lawrenceburg, learned that their slipshod attempts to build levees had been at best a macabre joke.

As the storm moved east, the water flowed south, roaring through towns and valleys that had never before experienced flooding. The Ohio River met the Mississippi at a record crest.

And as the storm moved east, it rained even more on the rivers in the highlands of Pennsylvania and New York, where the floodwater was sent back downstream toward ... Ohio.

Wikipedia explains the relief effort. In those days the American Red Cross was nothing much beyond symbolic.

"In 1913, years before the federal government provided significant disaster relief, state and local communities handled their own disaster response and relief. Cleanup efforts were made even more difficult with increased fire and health risks, flood-damaged communications systems, disrupted transportation networks, debris-littered streets, and flooded utility systems."

President Woodrow Wilson reportedly telegraphed the governors of the hard-hit states, offering relief.

The cold fact: Indiana Gov. Samuel M. Ralston did not receive Wilson's telegram offering federal support due to flood-damaged communications.

Indiana basically addressed its own needs, though private relief funds did arrive from national service organizations such as the Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce.

What recommendations followed? In the next entry, we will take a look at that.

Meanwhile, the flooding really never ended.

Click to see FOUR-PICTURE CAPTURE of a bridge about to be swept away on the Miami River in Hamilton, Ohio. (Butler County Historical Society.) ED: 2024, the link is not secure, but the photos exist. You may need to do some sleuthing.

Big-Four railroad line at Rushville was washed away.
(No clue on source of photo)

OhioHistory.org

Deadly streams -- Part 4 (Brookville's pain)

Thanks: Thomas Keesling collection

An ironic detail that can easily be overlooked in the face of the horrendous flood of 1913 is that the community this blog is intended to address actually was scarcely affected.

Fairfield, serenely perched on the East Fork of the Whitewater River, was never threatened by the incredible forces of the raging streams that burst out of their banks over much of the Midwest.

Downstream, in Brookville, the residents would fare far worse. In other sections of the country, the disaster was maddening and deadly. An estimated 650 died in the flooding, nearly 400 of them in Ohio. Central Indiana, including Indianapolis, also recorded significant loss of life. The numbers are not accurate enough to matter.

This entry deals with how Brookville was affected. Later on, some interesting anecdotes about the flood and why it ranks as one of the country's worst calamities. (The Johnstown, Pa., dam rupture and flood of 1889 took more than 2,200 lives.)

August Reifel's 1915 history, produced only two years after the flood, paints a scary scenario:

March 25, 1913

"Hundreds and thousands of dollars’ worth of property was destroyed and fifteen lives lost. Six hundred people in Brookville were rendered homeless and scores of dwellings swept away and torn to pieces. The flood was the result of many days’ rain, and every rivulet and creek in the valley was a roaring torrent, which went sweeping down the two branches of the Whitewater River.

"The heaviest blow was sustained at Brookville, where the two streams unite. Both valleys — that of the East fork and West fork — were submerged in many feet of water. At the depot and paper mills the water was fully 20 feet above the tracks.

"The earliest intimation of danger was soon after midnight on Monday and about two o’clock a.m. the scenes in Brookville were beyond description. The electric light plant was under water and all lights were put out, so that lanterns had to be brought into use by the hundreds of people who had been startled by the shrill steam whistles and the clanging of church bells.

"People in the flats were warned and as fast as possible conveyed to safe places, while their property was swept away and lost forever.

"When daylight came, the scene was one of desolation. The only land to be seen in all the valley part of town was a narrow strip from the Christian Church to the old bank building. Men and women were seen perched on housetops, waving distress signals from windows and clinging to wreckage.

"The water continued to rise until it reached its climax on Tuesday morning at nine o’clock, when it reached a point 10 feet higher than any previous flood record."

In Brookville, the rain continued. The heavy downpour dumped more water into the swollen rivers, sending it downstream to the bulging Miami, which couldn't take it. the water continued to rise.

"The greatest loss to property in the county was its bridges. The railroad bridges at Laurel and Brookville, the one over Salt Creek, the one over Duck Creek, at Metamora, the paper mill bridge at Brookville, and old Stringer Ford Bridge and the “Old White Bridge,” and the new concrete bridge. Also the bridge at New Trenton,  and those over the Whitewater and Big Cedar rivers in the southern portion of the county were swept from their abutments."

Upstream in Fairfield, the old wooden covered bridge stood its ground and remained in place until 1973 when vandals burned it.

Not everyone was saved, Reifel reports.

"Perhaps the saddest incident was the drowning of the entire John A. Fries family and (those) of Mr. Fries’ mother’s home, which stood close by her son’s, both in Stavetown, on the flats to the south of town. This is the old brick and tile district, where for so many years these families had lived in two old landmarks, both of which were swept away. The hours at which these houses were washed away is not known, but sometime after midnight. In these two homes all eight of the occupants were drowned."

The flood displaced about 40 percent of Brookville's residents, or about 850 people. Of the 15 who died, one body was not recovered.

So, what caused this horrific event? The term we use today is "perfect storm." Anything that could possibly go wrong, did.

In Part 5, some of that will be explored.

Disclaimer: I use photos somewhat indiscriminately to illustrate these entries. After a while, the scope of the tragedy becomes overwhelming. A photograph of a disaster did not live the disaster. It's interesting to observe these events and evoke some form of shock or passive dismay. Reality is much different. These were people and places, even those who were affected many years later for coincidentally connected reasons. -- John

Deadly streams -- part 3

Flooding on the White River

Humans have a tendency to make order out of chaos when it comes to nature. Nature is indifferent to that.

Creeks and rivers exist for a reason inside nature's domain. They're the drainpipes that let the world's water go round and round, clearing away the debris, spreading the wealth ... all sorts of things that people really don't actually understand. Mankind's tendency to overlook the need to manage the environment plays nicely into nature's hands. When it rains, it rains.

In most years, the amount of rainfall is consistent. An inch here or there, sometimes four or five inches at a time, followed by a few weeks without any at all.

Flooding just happens. To nature, it's a matter of doing what nature does and it's really our own fault if we decide to build our houses right next to the river.

Over about a hundred-year period, it's difficult to evaluate any trends for flooding on the Whitewater, the Miami and the Ohio. High water was a regular event. In some years, more a nuisance than a calamity.

In rare instances, a dreadful disaster.

So went 1913, often called the worst flood in North American history. It actually started way upstream and it actually was a two-piece tragedy.

There are two faces to the flood, the one at the northern end of it ... in Brookville, and the southern end of it ... in Lawrenceburg. (Actually, the flood goes a lot farther downstream, but for our blog, Dearborn County will be good enough.)

There were actually two floods that winter, the first coming in January. Archibald Shaw, in his 1915 history (2 years after the flood) reports:

"The freshets of 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911 and 1912 were not high enough to be classed as high waters, although on each year the water crossed the established “danger line” of 50 feet at Cincinnati. Unusually heavy rains fell during the second and third weeks of January. The mountain streams at the headwaters of the Ohio were fed by the melting of abundant snow and the continued rainfall swept it all into the Ohio with a mighty rush. By leaps the river came up out of its banks and on January 15 reached a height of about 62 feet at Lawrenceburg."

Shaw says two watchmen had been posted near the river to monitor its rise and somewhere in the night, the churning water ripped a hole in the levee, exposing its shoddy construction. The terrified watchmen were able to reach a nearby fire station and ring the bell, the standard alarm for imminent high water.

“The opening in the embankment made by the mudslide is about 60 feet wide by 80 feet long and 20 feet deep. The levee at this point is approximately 35 feet high, 150 feet wide at the base and 20 feet wide at the summit. The inside portion of the fill had been made of sand, cinders and loose soil and contained the timbers of an old trestle about which the fill had been made."

The Lawrenceburg levee was a disaster waiting to happen.

But the breach was patched with sandbags and hard work and the city breathed a sigh of relief. "The levee is Lawrenceburg’s most important asset. Since the flood of 1884 no flood waters have entered the city, which is a record of which probably no other town within reach of the Ohio’s floods can boast.”

The city was saved.

Then arrived the real flood, which came on Easter, March 22.

Shaw writes: "This flood was heralded on postcards sold over the world as the greatest disaster of modern times. For being spectacular, both dramatic and tragic, this flood never had a precedent and probably never will be duplicated. It descended on an unsuspecting and unprepared people as the proverbial lightning from a clear sky."

Easter was early that year. And the day started pleasantly enough.

"The next morning the papers told of the cyclones that swept through Nebraska and other Western states. Still there was no concern felt in the peaceful Ohio valley. That day the rain came — and such rain! From Monday morning until Tuesday morning the precipitation was about 4 inches throughout the valley of the Miami River.

"The hillsides shed this water like a duck’s back and soon all of the side streams and larger ones were pouring a flood of water into the Miami and Whitewater rivers. These streams could not contain this volume of water and it spread out over the bottom lands, sweeping away barns, outbuildings, railway stations, houses and all sorts of property as it raced along."

Bridges were swept away in rapid succession.

"At Elizabethtown, Ohio, the waters were temporarily checked by the embankments on which the Cincinnati, Lawrenceburg & Aurora electric line and the Big Four railroad run.

"This barrier only served to hold the water until it had gathered enough energy when it pushed embankment, bridges and all obstructions before it and sped on to overthrow the gigantic steel bridge over the Miami that had only recently been built to replace an obsolete one.

"This bridge was the longest single span bridge in the world at the time. Within 30 minutes it was at the bottom of the river, a mass of twisted iron and broken concrete."

An estimated 12 inches of rain fell within 72 hours, raising the Ohio River to about 70 feet at Lawrenceburg -- 4 feet higher than its waterlogged levee. The frantic efforts to raise the levee's height were no value -- the river ripped a 200-yard hole in it.

"Through this vast opening the water rushed with the force of a Niagara and struck the houses at the extreme end of Center street and then took a course toward the Newtown pond in the direction of the Catholic church."

The destruction was apparent a week later. It took that long for the water to recede. The loss of life was minimal at Lawrenceburg and at nearby Aurora and residents somehow applauded themselves for that, Shaw writes.

"The streets, sidewalks and floors of homes were covered with a slimy mud, from 3 to 6 inches in depth. It stuck tightly when it was wet and it literally froze fast when it became dry."

Indianapolis flooding, 1913

The 1913 flood was much larger in scope than just the Whitewater-Ohio valleys. Most streams in Indiana roared out of their banks, including the White River in Indianapolis (photo at left) and the Wabash at several points in north-central Indiana. Most of Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois suffered serious flooding. As well, the tornadoes that ripped through Omaha and other areas of Nebraska sponsored their own brand of disaster.

Brookville, on the other end of the flood, had its own problems. That will be explored in Part 4.

I have found at least one book about 1913 that is quite compelling. There appear to be many others.

HERE'S A LINK TO THAT BOOK.

Deadly streams -- Part 2

The 1907 flood in Cincinnati. 

It's safe to say that water tends to flow downstream. When there is a lot of it, the streams downstream tend to fill up with water.

That's one definition of a flood.

The folks on the Ohio River just downstream from Cincinnati had their own definition of a flood.

Pestilence.

After a devastating event in 1882, the city of Lawrenceburg cobbled together what it thought was the solution -- a levee that was designed to protect a community that had been regularly abused by high water, mostly in the late winter or early spring months.

Sure enough, when 1883 rolled around, the relief that it couldn't happen again changed to terror when it became apparent that it would.

Archibald Shaw, the craftsman of the 1915 edition of the history of Dearborn County, describes what came next in the winter of 1882-83.

"Scarcely had the damage done by the flood of 1882 been repaired before the winter of 1882-83 set in. Rainfall began during the latter part of January and continued incessantly during the early part of February. Responding to these copious rains the Miami and Ohio rivers began to rise by leaps and bounds and the general topic of conversation in Lawrenceburg was the probable repetition of the flood of a year previous."

The levee? Yeah, there was that.

"Fears were entertained that the rents made by the break in the levee had not been repaired strongly enough to withstand another such high stage of water. But all such calculations were upset when the rainfall became so heavy that it soon became evident that the water would reach a height greatly in excess of the flood of 1882."

In other words, even a strong levee wasn't going to be high enough. The flood of 1882 had gone just over 63 feet. Residents never believed it could go higher than that.

 "The Miami spent its force, but the great volume of water in the Ohio came on relentlessly and finally reached the 68-foot mark. This covered High Street to a depth of 6 feet and flooded the entire city, including a few squares in Newtown."

Just downstream, the city of Aurora was taking on water as well. "The floods already mentioned did considerable damage in the town of Aurora, but the havoc wrought there was not nearly as severe as that inflicted upon Lawrenceburg."

The towns along the Ohio breathed a sigh of relief after the 1883 disaster, convinced they'd seen the worst of it.

A winter later, they were about to see the worst of it after all.

Shaw's history:

"Hard on the heels of this disastrous (1883) overflow came the unspeakable calamity of the flood of 1884. This flood has gone down in history to the date of this writing, as the greatest that has ever happened in the Ohio valley."

An understatement to be sure but how one measures calamity may depend in large part on how it's observed.

The oddities of weather are intriguing and for a period of three winters, conditions in the winter months conspired to create a monstrosity. Frozen ground, snow cover, long periods of heavy rain, poor soil and water management.

January 1884 included "snow drifting into the valleys and in some places reaching a depth of several feet. Then came a sudden climatic change and warm rains began to descend. The city of Lawrenceburg was powerless to do anything but watch the rapid rise of the water, knowing that a terrible flood was inevitable."

That levee?

"The rising waters slowly crept up the bank toward the top of the levee, and about noon on Wednesday, February 6, began to pour into the city between Elm  and St. Clair streets. Up to 10 o’clock at night but a small portion of the city had been flooded, but at that hour, the upper levee gave away and the waters rushed in with all fury across the fields and into the city, to meet the waters coming in from the Ohio."

The weather was brutal.

"Added to this buoyant force was the menace of the waves driven by a gale that prevailed for several days during the highest part of the flood. Hundreds of buildings were torn from their foundations and lashed about until they were reduced to splinters and finally set adrift to the mercy of the swift current."

Lawrenceburg and Aurora had been warned to expect a flood stage of 70 feet. They were not mistaken.

One newspaper account:

The above part of this article was written Monday morning, when we had the faintest hope that there would not be much more to tell, but the rains kept coming until last night. But the rainfall had been general through the whole valley of the Ohio, and the greatest of all floods was inevitable. Up and up and up it climbed, driving people from one refuge to another, until at four o’clock this (Thursday) afternoon, February 14, 1884, it had reached a point 6 feet above the legendary flood of 1832.

Several times after 1884, the valley was threatened with flooding, including 1897 and 1898 "which were of sufficient height that the cities of Lawrenceburg and Aurora were inconvenienced."

The levee?

Shaw's report:

"To Lawrenceburg these floods were of great importance in that they gave the first real test to the immense (68 feet high) levee that had been constructed jointly by the city and the United States government. This embankment reached from Hardintown to the fairgrounds, crossed the Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern railway and followed the river bank to the Mitchell Brick Co. plant, thence it curved to the northwest and ended near the Bauer cooperage works. The materials used in constructing this work were not carefully selected and the successive floods of 1897 and 1898 pointed out this source of weakness very forcibly. Landslides were frequent and in every case revealed poor material as the cause. These defects were remedied and every known weak place was fortified against the visitation of another flood."

The  flood of 1906-07 was notable.

"Toward the end of December a steady rainfall began that continued without much cessation for three weeks. Toward the end of that time the rainfall grew more severe, especially in the Miami valley."

Lawrenceburg struggled and finally secured its levee.

"On Saturday, January 19, the elements cut loose in all their fury. The wind freshened from a little breeze in the morning to a 40-mile-an-hour gale by night and hurled gigantic waves against the lower levee. Each onslaught loosened some of the dirt from beneath the cross-ties of the Big Four switch, which runs over that part of the bank. By nightfall it was evident that a great effort must be made to save the levee in this quarter, and even as the force was being organized to push this work there came such a rainfall as is seldom experienced. Water fell in torrents and, with the river at a 64-foot stage, the worst was feared. This rain, however, proved to be purely local."

It couldn't get much worse than that.

Well, yes ... it could.

Postcard from 1907 shows how the city shored up its levee. 

Erosion of the levee threatened the Big Four Railroad tracks that ran over this part of the old levee. 

(Cincinnativiews.net)