THE DEATH-BEARING FLOOD AT DAYTON
EXTENT OF THE FLOOD--THE RESERVOIR BREAKS--BUSINESS SECTION
FLOODED--THOUSANDS MAROONED--MANY CREEP TO SAFETY BY CABLE--JOHN H.
PATTERSON, CASH REGISTER HEAD, LEADS RELIEF--EMPLOYEES ASSIST IN
RELIEF--SCENES OF HORROR--APPEALS FOR AID.
It remained for two telephone operators to be the real factors in giving
to the world the news of the first day of the flood which inundated
Dayton, Ohio, and the whole of the Miami Valley on Tuesday, March 25th.
One, in the main exchange at Dayton, flashed the last tidings that came
out of the stricken city by telephone, and delivered to Governor Cox
news which enabled him to grasp the situation and start the rescue work.
The other was the operator at Phoneton, who served as a relay operator
for the man in Dayton. They stood to their posts as long as the wires
held, and worked all day and night.
EXTENT OF THE FLOOD
A seething flood of water from eight to twenty feet deep covered all but
the outlying sections of the city by the evening of the 25th.
Beneath the waters and within the ruined buildings lay the unnumbered
dead. The flooded districts comprised practically a circle with a radius
of a mile and a half, and in no place was the water less than six feet
deep. In Main Street, in the downtown section, the water was twenty feet
deep.
The horror of the flooded district was heightened by more than a dozen
fires which could be seen in the flooded district, but out of reach of
fire fighters.
Most of the business houses and nearly all residences had occupants.
Downtown the offices were filled with men, fathers unable to get home,
and the upper floors and on some of the roofs of the residences were
helpless women and children. Hundreds of houses, substantial buildings
in the residence districts, many of them with helpless occupants, were
washed away.
The water in the Miami River began rising Monday afternoon at the rate
of six inches an hour and continued to rise throughout the night. The
first break in the levee at Dayton came at four o'clock Tuesday morning
at Stratford Avenue. This was followed by other breaks at East Second
Street and Fifth.
THE RESERVOIR BREAKS
But the severity of the flood that hit Dayton was due to the collapse of
the Loramie reservoir in Shelby County about seven o'clock on Tuesday
morning, hurling millions of gallons of water into the swollen Miami.
Rushing down the Miami Valley, the water carried everything before it
at Piqua, Troy, Sidney, Dayton, Carrollton, Miamisburg and Hamilton.
Three rivers, the Miami, Stillwater and Mad, and Wolf Creek conjoin in
the heart of Dayton. As the city, particularly North Dayton, and a north
section called Riverside, lies almost on a level with the four streams,
it is protected from high water by levees twenty-five feet high, which
guide the streams through the city from its northern to its southern
end.
[Illustration: NORTHERN PART OF DAYTON, AND WATER COURSES WHICH
OVERWHELMED THE CITY]
North Dayton is a manufacturing and residence district. Riverdale is a
residence district. In the southern part of the city, on fairly high
ground, is the great plant of the National Cash Register Company
Wolf Creek, flowing into the Miami from the northwest, early got out of
its banks and added to the flood flowing over the floors of the Williams
Street and Edgewater Avenue bridges.
Mad River, in the northern section, also got over its banks early. All
of North Dayton, save the extreme uplands, was inundated. The Miami was
more than a mile wide below the city, and thousands of acres were
inundated.
BUSINESS SECTION FLOODED
At Third and Ludlow Streets, where were located the great Algonquin
Hotel, a magnificent church, the great Y. M. C. A. building and the
Hotel Atlas, were many feet of water. The central portion of the city
was flooded, and the beautiful residence district, lying east of the
exclusive boulevard district, was a Venice.
Hundreds of homes were filled with floating furniture. The citizens,
used to the slow-creeping floods of other years, were entirely mystified
and distracted by this sudden, hurtling, seething flood that seemed to
spring by night from the clouds that hovered low over the city and
plunged their seas of water into the rivers that converge in the very
heart of Dayton.
Railroad and wagon bridges over the Miami River were swept away. The
telephone operator at Phoneton said that from his window in the station
he had seen a bridge one mile north of Dayton collapse and another
bridge crossing the river at Tadmor, eleven miles north of Dayton, was
expected to give way at any moment.
Communication between Phoneton and Dayton, the operator said, was only
intermittent, as the only available wire was being used by the linemen
in their efforts to restore service.
Troy and Tippecanoe City, north of Dayton, were both flooded and many
people took refuge on the roofs of their homes.
Below Dayton vast acreages were seas of yellow. Farms were lakes, roads
were raceways through which raced the swollen streams. Telegraph service
was maimed, and all sorts of communication was well-nigh impossible.
THOUSANDS MAROONED
Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences,
two miles each way from the center of the town, were thousands of
persons whom it was impossible to approach. At Wyoming Street, three
miles beyond what has heretofore been considered the danger line, water
was running eight feet deep.
The Western Union operator at Dodson, Ohio, said the office was filled
with foreigners who had fled from Dayton. Looters were shooting people
down in the streets, according to these refugees. They also reported
that the Fifth Street bridge at Dayton had washed down against the
railroad bridge and arrangements were being made to dynamite both
structures. This bridge was dynamited in the afternoon, but the effect
was not felt to any marked degree.
The foreigners who sought refuge in the Dodson telegraph office were
panic-stricken and told wild stories of the flood, saying nearly every
part of the town was under water and the conditions becoming more
serious.
The breaking of the Tarleton reservoir, which supplies the drinking
water, left the city without water and added great danger of typhoid in
the use of flood water.
Frank Purviance, an employee of the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and
Eastern Traction Company, at Dayton, over the long-distance telephone
said scores had been drowned there.
"They're dying like rats in their homes; bodies are washing around the
streets and there's no relief in sight," Purviance said.
MANY CREEP TO SAFETY BY CABLE
At Wyoming Station, on the South Side, where the National Cash Register
Company centered its efforts at rescue, many saved their lives by
creeping on a telephone cable, a hundred feet above the flood.
At first linemen crept along the cables, carrying tow ropes to which
flat-bottomed boats were attached. When the flood became so fierce that
the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women
crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw darkness fall
and gave up hope of rescue.
Those willing to risk their lives in the attempt to rescue found
themselves helpless in the face of the water.
The first to seek safety by sliding along the telegraph conduits was a
man. Then came four women. The first of the women was Mrs. Luella Meyer.
She was a widow with one son, a boy in knee-breeches.
He got out on the wire and with the agility of a cat was soon across.
But Mrs. Meyers, when over the boiling torrent, swayed as though faint,
slipped and the crowd stood with bated breath.
By a lucky chance her senses came back to her so that she could grasp
one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to
the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This
time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at
the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from nervous and physical
exhaustion.
Four companies of the Third Regiment, Ohio National Guard, spent the
night aiding the city officials in rescuing families in the
flood-stricken districts. Telephone and railroad service was interrupted
in every direction.
John Hadkins and James Hosay, privates of the Ohio National Guard, were
drowned while in acts of rescue. The body of an elderly woman floated
down near Wyoming Street in the afternoon, but the current was so swift
that it could not be recovered.
The National Cash Register Company's plant, on a high hill, offered the
only haven in the South End. Three women became mothers in the halls of
its office buildings during the night.
In the woodworking department of the National Cash Register Company
boats were being turned out at the rate of ten an hour, and these were
rushed to where the waters had crossed Main Street in a sort of gully.
But the waters crept up and the strength of the current was far too
strong for the crude punts, though they were the best that could be made
in a hurry.
Trip after trip was made and hundreds of the refugees were taken from
this stretch of houses.
JOHN H. PATTERSON, CASH REGISTER HEAD, LEADS RELIEF
Although John H. Patterson, president of the National Cash Register
Company of Dayton, which employs more than 7,100 persons, is nearly
sixty-nine years old, and has led a life of unusual activity, he was out
in a rowboat tugging at the oars and personally helping in the work of
rescue. His two children, Frederick and Miss Dorothy, both in their
early twenties, likewise were so engaged.
When despatches came from Dayton late at night saying "the only
organized relief movement is that which is being conducted by the
National Cash Register Company," those who knew the fighting
characteristics of the head of the big corporation were not surprised to
receive the additional information that Mr. Patterson as usual was
conducting the business of rescue and relief in person.
The Dayton despatches in relating that young Frederick Patterson "is
leading rescue parties" and that Miss Dorothy, "dressed in old clothes
and her hair streaming with water, stood in the rain for hours receiving
refugees," gave a notion that the children are one with the sire.
EMPLOYEES ASSIST IN RELIEF
The Cash Register plant is outside the flood zone. As soon as the waters
rushed upon the city John Henry Patterson turned his entire force into a
relief organization. Every wheel was stopped in the Cash Register plant
early on Tuesday morning and the employees were set to work by Mr.
Patterson to help the sufferers.
Mr. Patterson bought up all the available food and had it carted to his
plant to feed the homeless. Straw was quickly strewn on the factory
floors, thus affording dry sleeping places for more than one thousand at
night. Every employee of the corporation capable of working on boats was
put to work at boat building.
Mr. Patterson is said to have made a promise long ago to his wife, who
was Katherine Beck, a school teacher of Brookline, Mass., when she was
dying, that he would give special care to the comfort and welfare of his
women and girl employees. The dining rooms in the big plant, the rest
and recreation rooms and other architectural comforts provided for the
women employees as a result of this promise came in very well in the
rescue work. The dining rooms and the rest and recreation rooms all were
used as eating halls in helping the sufferers.
While Mr. Patterson was out pulling at the oars of one of his boats
thirty-one of his company's automobiles were meeting the craft to hurry
the refugees to the Cash Register plant and to dry clothing, food and
beds.
Mr. Patterson sent out an appeal for immediate food supplies and for
doctors and medicine. By night three thousand homeless were housed in
improvised quarters in the Cash Register offices.
GIRL IN MAN'S CLOTHING
"What is your name?" asked the registrars who received the refugees at
the National Cash Register plant of a slender young person in men's
clothes.
"Nora Thuma," was the reply.
"Nora?" they asked.
"Yes, I'm a girl," was the answer.
She had put on a man's suit in order to cross the perilous span of wires
unhampered by skirts.
She came in with Ralph Myers, his wife and their little baby. Myers had
climbed a telephone wire pole first. He let down a rope to his wife, who
tied to it a meal sack which contained their baby, three months old.
Myers pulled the rope with its precious burden up and then let it down
again to aid his wife to ascend from her perilous position.
With the meal sack over his shoulder and his wife holding on to the two
wires he walked along the cable a full block before he reached safety.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood.
A typical scene on the outskirts of Dayton. Here scores of houses were
completely washed from their foundations and many of the inhabitants
were drowned]
[Illustration: Copyright by the International News Service.
A view taken at Ludlow and Second Streets, Dayton, after the water had
receded, showing one phase of the devastation resulting from the flood]
SCENES OF HORROR
Scenes of indescribable horror were reported by the rescuers under
Brigadier-General George H. Wood. Among those who perished were said to
have been ten members of the Ohio National Guard who were guarding a
bridge.
One man marooned with his family on the roof of his home shot and killed
his wife and three children and then himself rather than suffer death in
the flames, according to a report received by J. J. Munsell, employment
superintendent of the National Cash Register Company, from a man who
actually saw the occurrence. The bodies floated away on the flood.
Rescuers tried to get to a raft that bore a man and four women that
whirled like a spool in the rapid waters. Then suddenly the raft was
sucked down in the water and another chapter was added to the tragedy.
WOMAN LEAPS WITH BABY
George H. Schaefer, a rescuer who went out into the flood with a skiff
and saved a woman and baby, told of his perilous trip.
"A house that had been torn from its foundation came floating up behind
us," said Schaefer. "The woman was frightened. I told her there was no
danger.
"Suddenly she stood up and jumped over with her baby in her arms. She
went straight down and never came up again."
Then there was the horror that William Riley, a salesman for the
National Cash Register Company, saw.
"We saw a very old woman standing at the window of a house waiting for
rescue," said Riley. "We rowed up to her. Suddenly the house parted and
the woman was engulfed. It was the last we saw of her."
There was the man who was nearly rescued. He had stepped into the skiff
and then walked back into his home, which a short time later floated
away with him. Incidents of this sort were multiplied.
John Scott ascended a telegraph pole and guided across the cable to
places of safety men, women and children rescued from flooded houses.
Scott had guided a dozen persons across the swaying bridges of wire when
an explosion that started a fire occurred. The shock knocked Scott from
the pole and he fell into a tree.
"The last I saw of him he was trying to get into the window of an
abandoned house by way of one of the branches of the tree," said Frank
Stevens, a fellow employee of Scott. "The house was in the path of the
fire."
APPEALS FOR AID
Thousands of those who were fortunate enough to escape the first rush of
the waters were fed on short rations, and appeals for help were sent out
by many of the leading men of the city.
Three carloads of foodstuffs arrived from Xenia, but there was no chance
to deliver them to the victims of the flood until the following day.
CRUEL NEED FOR AN ARK
Frank Brandon, vice-president of the Dayton, Lebanon and Cincinnati
Railroad, succeeded during the night in getting communication for a
short time from Dayton to Lebanon. He said that the situation was
appalling and beyond all control.
"According to my advices, the situation beggars description," said Mr.
Brandon. "What the people need most of all is boats. The water is high
in every street and assistance late this afternoon was simply out of the
question. My superintendent at Dayton told me that at least sixty had
perished and probably a great many more, at the same time assuring me
that unless something that closely approached a miracle happened the
death list would run considerably higher. We are now rigging up several
special trains and will make every effort possible to get into Dayton
tonight."
It was on these scenes of indescribable horror that the shades of night
closed down.