THE FLOOD IN WESTERN OHIO
DISTRESS IN BELLEFONTAINE--PIQUA DELUGED--TROY A HEAVY
SUFFERER--MIAMI ON THE RAMPAGE AT MIDDLETOWN--HAMILTON HARD
HIT--BIG RESERVOIRS THREATENING--OLENTANGY RIVER A LAKE AT
DELAWARE--FLOOD AT SPRINGFIELD--NEW RICHMOND UNDER WATER.
The rushing torrent of water that swept down the Miami River, surging
over Dayton, devastated a score or more of towns in its mad course from
the creeks around Bellefontaine to the point southwest of Cincinnati
where the waters of the Miami merge with those of the Ohio.
DISTRESS IN BELLEFONTAINE
Cries of distress arose from Bellefontaine on Wednesday, March 26th. At
that time millions of gallons of water were pounding against the banks
of the Lewiston reservoir, fifteen miles from Bellefontaine, and it was
feared that if the increasing flood should burst the banks the lives of
every inhabitant of the Lower Miami Valley would be imperiled.
The immense reservoir at Lewiston did burst its banks between Lake View
and Russell's Point and swept through the great Miami Valley like a
tidal wave. It was this vast quantity of water, added to the already
overflowing river, that inundated the cities of Sidney and Piqua.
[Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The engraving shows a view of Broadway, Watervliet, New York, the
principal business street of that city, covered with eight feet of
water]
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The bridge shown in the illustration leads to the Carnegie Steel Company
at Youngstown, Ohio. Ordinarily this bridge is far enough above the
water to allow the large river steamers to pass under]
At Sidney there was no loss of life, but the town was badly flooded and
early reports of loss of life ran high.
PIQUA DELUGED
The flooded Miami swept over Piqua in a great deluge. The water reached
the first floor of the Plaza Hotel, which is situated in the high part
of the city. Panic-stricken the people fled from their homes or sought
refuge in the upper stories of high buildings. Fire broke out in many
places. At one point in the city the water was twelve feet deep. Many
persons were drowned. Many lost all their possessions.
Relief measures were taken by city authorities. The property loss was
great, as most of the manufacturing plants were destroyed by the flood.
A company of militia from Covington maintained order and cared for those
made destitute by the flood.
TROY A HEAVY SUFFERER
The town of Troy was also a heavy sufferer. The state troops who arrived
in the town on March 27th with provisions for Dayton were stranded.
One-third of the town was cut off from gas, electricity and water
supply. A train load of provisions arrived. The provisions were
carefully distributed.
One-half of the state troops left on foot for Dayton, following the
tracks of the railroad.
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FLOOD EDITION
THE PIQUA DAILY CALL
Vol. 29 PIQUA, OHIO, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1913. No. 134
Calamity Strikes Piqua; Our City Bowed in Grief
Appalling Loss of Human Life, and Great Destruction of Property.
Thousands Are Homeless
City Under Martial Law--Communications Cut Off with Outside
World--Relief Station Established at the Y. M. C. A.
Piqua is today a stricken city; a city bowed down, broken with grief. We
have been visited by the greatest calamity in our history. The loss of
life that has been suffered from the flood cannot be estimated now.
It is sufficient now to tell that relief measures are being taken. The
Business Men's Association, the Y. M. C. A. and citizens generally are
co-operating with the city and military authorities to bring order out
of chaos to rescue those confined in houses still standing in the
flooded sections to house and feed the homeless.
The city is practically under martial law. Company C. and Company A. of
Covington are here and patrolling the city under the the direction of
the city authorities.
Last night, we regret to say, there was a beginning of looting and
plundering in the south part of the city.
Rigorous measures will be taken by the military and the police to
repress and prevent such in the future.
Piqua still is cut off from communication from the outside world. All
the telegraph and telephone wires are down. Bridges and tracks are down
on both railroads and no trains are running.
The only outside communication possible has been by using a Pennsylvania
freight engine to Bradford from which point it has been possible to use
the telegraph.
All the traction lines still are crippled and unable to run their cars
in or out of the city. How soon it may be possible to re-open these
lines of communication it is impossible to say.
While greatly crippled the local telephone service has been maintained
by both exchanges. The operators have done heroic work day and night
ever since the first danger began to threaten.
No mail has been received or sent out of Piqua since Monday. Local
deliveries, of course, are impossible.
North and south the C. H. & D. R. R. is crippled. From Sidney to Dayton
the washout is practically complete.
The Pennsylvania R. R. bridge was washed out at the east end, and there
is no communication across the river. It is understood that much track
has been washed out. A line is open to Bradford and westward.
The Y. M. C. A., the Spring street, Favorite Hill Schools, the
Presbyterian, Christian, Church of Christ, Grace M. E., St. Marys school
hall, and countless homes have been opened freely to the flood
sufferers. The Y. M. C. A. has been the center of the relief
administration and from which all directions have been issued and to
which the sufferers have come.
Provisions can and are being brought from Fletcher and other places east
to the sufferers who have reached the hills on the east of the river.
This morning Mayor Kiser placed the fire department at work freeing the
most necessary places from water. The electric light plant was first
pumped out. Last night the city was in darkness except for gas, oil
lamps, and candles. The hospital was found needing little attention.
The damage to property is beyond calculation. Over 200 houses at least
have been washed away and destroyed. Shawnee is practically wiped out.
The above is a facsimile reproduction of the first page of _The Piqua
Daily Call_, issued the day after the city was inundated by the flood.
Ordinarily the Call is an eight-page newspaper, 17 × 20 inches in size.
This issue consisted of four pages 7½ × 10 inches.
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MIAMISBURG CUT OFF
Miamisburg, a town of eight thousand, was cut off for days. When news
finally reached neighboring towns the death list was estimated at
twenty-five. Later estimates placed it at less. Only one body has been
recovered, but the property damage ran high.
MIAMI ON THE RAMPAGE AT MIDDLETOWN
As the result of the worst cloudburst known in twenty years the great
bridge over the Miami River, at Middletown, was carried out on March
25th. Fifteen persons were afterward missing and scores of houses could
be seen floating down the stream. The water and electric light plants
were out of commission.
Two hundred houses were under water, their former occupants finding
shelter in the school houses, churches and city buildings. The great
Miami River was a mile wide at this point.
The city was practically cut off from the outside world. Tracks of both
the Big Four and Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroads were under
water and no trains were running. The tracks of the Ohio Electric
Railway were washed out in many places. A portion of the state dam in
the Miami River, north of Middletown, was washed away.
Water from the river started the Maimi and Erie Canal on a rampage and
submerged half of Lakeside, a suburb. The families of Harold Gillespie
and Mrs. Mary Fisher were forced to flee from their homes in their night
clothes.
The casualty list could not be estimated with accuracy. It was believed
that from fifty to one hundred had been claimed by the waters.
About three o'clock the following morning the river began to fall
slowly, but the situation was still dangerous. Supplies were rapidly
running out, and a food famine was looked for. Misery was averted by the
arrival of food late Thursday night, but building of fires was not
permitted. The authorities feared an outbreak of flames similar to the
Dayton conflagration. Ten thousand of the eighteen thousand population
were homeless.
HAMILTON HARD HIT
Of all the cities in the Miami Valley with the exception of Dayton,
Hamilton was hardest hit. Many persons killed, a thousand houses wrecked
by the rushing torrent and 15,000 homeless was the toll of the flood in
this city and environs, and the harrowing scenes attending flood
disasters in the past decade faded into insignificance when compared
with the havoc wrought by the latest deluge.
Before darkness blotted out the scene on March 25th, house after house,
with the occupants clinging to the roofs and screaming for help, floated
on the breast of the flood, but the cries for help had to go unanswered
because of the lack of boats. What little rescue work there was
accomplished was done before night came on, as the rescuers were
powerless after darkness.
The city was then without light of any kind, the electric light and gas
plants being ten feet under water. Soldiers rushed to this city from
Columbus were in charge of the situation, the town being under martial
law.
The victims of the raging waters were caught like rats in a trap, so
fast did the flood pour in on them, and few had even a fighting chance
for their lives. Ghastly in the extreme was the situation. The cries of
the women and children as they faced inevitable death, and the frantic
but unsuccessful efforts of husbands and fathers to rescue loved ones,
presented a scene that will go down in the history of world's
catastrophes as one of the worst on record.
Fire added to the horror of the situation when shortly after midnight
the plant of the Champion Coated Paper Company, which is six blocks long
by one block wide, broke into flames. In less than a quarter of an hour
the entire factory was a mass of fire and there was no chance of
checking its progress in the least as the water service needed by the
fire department was put out of commission early in the day.
The Beckett Company's paper mill, valued at $500,000 for buildings and
equipment, collapsed into the flood the following morning.
SUFFERING AMONG THE REFUGEES
On Wednesday, March 26th, the river began to fall at the rate of nine
inches an hour. After the season of awful horror the change brought
hope. The work of rescue and relief, however, was exceedingly difficult.
There were only a few boats that could be used in the work of rescue
and relief. Ohio National Guardsmen who arrived from Cincinnati Tuesday
night did heroic work. They came in four motor trucks and brought food
and clothing with them. One of the trucks returned to Cincinnati for
more boats.
A relief train arrived from Indianapolis Wednesday morning and other
cars and automobile trucks, loaded with supplies, managed to reach the
outskirts of the city.
The Lakeview Hotel, which had previously housed fifty refugees,
collapsed early Wednesday, but all the occupants left in time to escape
death.
Williamsdale, Cooke, Otto and Overpeck, the north suburbs of Hamilton,
were in ruins. On the west side of the river many residences were saved,
but there was despair among the survivors, who were unable to get word
from husbands and fathers who were caught on the east side and unable to
cross after bridges were destroyed. Efforts to get lines across the
river were futile.
Provisions for the homeless continued arriving in abundance, but the
gas, electric light and water plants were in ruins and this added to the
terrors of the living.
More than two hundred and fifty persons spent two days and nights in the
little court house without light, food, water or heat, and often they
were drenched with rain that leaked through holes in the roof.
REMOVING THE DEAD
As the flood waters receded on March 27th, the authorities immediately
began the work of removing the dead. The first hour of the search saw
ten bodies uncovered from the ruins, and the most conservative estimates
placed the death roll at fifty.
[Illustration: THE FLOOD IN MIAMI VALLEY
The above map shows a part of Ohio which was devastated by the most
disastrous flood in American history. A large number of small streams
converge into larger streams and then into still larger water courses,
several of which form a junction at Dayton, where the greatest loss of
life and the heaviest damage to property occurred.]
Piled high upon the east side of the court house on Friday were coffins
awaiting the flood victims, whose bodies were being gathered as rapidly
as possible.
On April 3d, the city offered a reward of ten dollars for each body
recovered from the debris left by the flood. Up to that time seventy-one
bodies had been recovered. It was believed, however, that many bodies
had been swept out of the Miami into the Ohio River and perhaps would
never be found.
DAMAGE OF $4,000,000
Secretary Garrison, of the War Department, who toured the flood district
of Hamilton on March 30th, as the personal representative of President
Wilson, was told that the property loss was estimated at $4,000,000.
With Secretary Garrison were Major-General Wood, chief of staff of the
army, and Major McCoy. They permeated the very heart of the city through
zones of devastation which in many respects rivaled in horror those
through which they passed in Dayton. They saw block after block in both
the residential and business sections of the city, where street lines
virtually were eliminated by upheaved and overturned houses jammed
against each other and against the buildings which withstood the shock,
in great and almost unbroken heaps of debris.
South Lebanon was cut off from Lebanon by a raging current that swept
all the surrounding farm lands, entailing a property loss of thousands
of dollars. All rivers and creeks south of Dayton to Lebanon were
swollen by a heavy rainfall.
The flooding of the Miami at Cleves, seven miles below Cincinnati,
caused the railroad embankment to break and that part of the town was
under fifteen feet of water. The operator at Cleves said he distinctly
heard cries for help, but he could not learn if there was any loss of
life or the extent of the property damage.
The following day the waters had receded, but part of the city was still
under water; no loss of life was reported. Hartwell and the vicinity
felt the force of the rising Mill Creek caused by the breaking of the
canal at Lockland. The large factories at Ivorydale were forced to close
down, and many thousands of employees were thrown out of work.
BIG RESERVOIRS THREATENING
The Grand Reservoir at Celina, Ohio, in the extreme western part of the
state, seriously threatened Celina and the adjacent towns. For two days
the very worst was feared, but on March 28th, the river was slightly
lower and no water was flowing over the banks.
OLENTANGY RIVER A LAKE AT DELAWARE
The Olentangy River, ordinarily only a creek, became a lake that covered
most of Delaware. In many places people were left clinging to trees,
roof-tops and telegraph poles crying for assistance. The work of rescue
was practically impossible because of the swift current of the flood,
and most of those who were seen trying to save themselves were swept
away to death.
The village of Stratford, five miles to the south, was entirely under
water and the loss great. Property damage in Delaware itself was
estimated at $2,000,000.
FLOOD AT SPRINGFIELD
Springfield suffered the worst flood in its history. Both Buck Creek and
Mad River broke from their banks and flooded the lowlands. Several
hundred houses in the eastern section of the city were surrounded by
water. They contained families who refused to abandon their homes. Many
factories were compelled to close.
There was no loss of life, but intense suffering due to insufficient
food supply and the destruction of many homes.
NEW RICHMOND UNDER WATER
The flooding of the Ohio in the southwestern part of the state caused
disaster in many other towns besides Cincinnati. On April 1st the entire
town of New Richmond was under water. The people took up quarters on the
hills surrounding the town. Provisions were received from Batavia and
there was no suffering. No one was reported dead or missing.
At Moscow, near New Richmond, fifty houses were washed from their
foundations.