PREVIOUS GREAT FLOODS AND TORNADOES
THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR--THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY--THE MISSISSIPPI ON A
RAMPAGE--DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE--THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO.
Floods are not usually so dramatic and awe-inspiring as tornadoes, but
they are even more destructive of life. The Johnstown flood of 1889,
however, was dramatic and even spectacular--so swiftly did it come and
so certainly could it have been avoided. It destroyed 2,235 lives, swept
away ten millions of dollars worth of property, and carried unutterable
grief into countless happy homes.
Lying in a narrow valley were eight villages, aggregating 50,000 to
80,000 inhabitants, the largest of the eight being situated at the lower
end, with about 25,000 inhabitants.
Far up in the mountain, 300 feet above the chief village of the valley,
hung a huge body of water. As nature had designed it, this had been a
small lake with natural outlets, which prevented it from being a menace
to the valley below. But the hand of man sought to improve the work of
nature. An immense dam, 110 feet in height, held back the water till the
lake was more than quadrupled in size.
THE SWOLLEN WATERS
These were the conditions on May 31, 1889. There had been heavy rains
for several days. The artificially enlarged lake was really a receiving
reservoir of the water-shed of the Alleghany Mountains. Every little
stream running into it was swollen to a torrent. The lake, which in
ordinary times was three and a half miles long, with an average width of
over a mile, and a depth in some portions of 100 feet, was swollen into
a volume of water of enormous proportions. Between it and the valley
below there was a dam nearly 1,000 feet wide, 100 feet high, ninety feet
thick at the base and twenty at the top. This barrier gave way and the
water rushed into the valley in a solid wave with a perpendicular front
of forty feet.
It swept away the seven smaller villages like straw, hurled them,
together with uncounted thousands of their inhabitants, upon the larger
village, and then, with the accumulated ruin of the whole eight, dashed
upon the stone bridge at the bottom of the valley. The bridge withstood
the shock, and a new dam, as fateful with horror as the first had been,
was formed. It held back the water so that the whole valley was a lake
from twenty to forty feet in depth, with the remains of its villages
beneath its surface. The wreckage of the ruined villages, piled from
forty to sixty feet high, against the bridge, spread over a vast area,
with countless bodies of the living and the dead crushed within it and
struggling for life upon it, caught fire, and burned to the water's
edge.
When the flood came--a terrific punishment for the carelessness of the
past--the doubters saw their homes washed away, their dear ones
drowned; in some cases they did not even live to see the extent of the
havoc wrought. Whole families were drowned like rats; houses were
shattered to pieces or floated about on the water like wrecked ships.
Intolerable was the suffering that followed--grief for the loss of dear
ones, actual physical hurt, hunger and want. The problem for many in the
eight towns was to begin life all over--and that without hope. Immediate
suffering was in some measure prevented by the speedy help rendered by
neighboring towns, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the entire nation.
But nothing could undo the fearful damage of the past.
THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY
Great as was the Johnstown flood, it shrinks into insignificance before
the appalling hurricane-brought flood of Galveston, which devastated the
city and swept thousands of its inhabitants to their death. There is
little in the new city which arose to remind one of the awful
tragedy--unless it be the strong sea-walls constructed to keep out
future floods.
The storm came over the bay from the gulf before daylight Saturday
morning, September 8, 1900. At 10 A. M. the inundation from the bay
began, but even then no alarm was felt. The wind took on new strength
and the waters were carried four blocks through the business section
into Market Street. Ocean freighters dragged anchors in the channel and
were soon crashing against the wharves. The wind reached the hurricane
stage, blowing at something like one hundred and twenty miles an hour,
and buildings began to crumble. By this time the bay water had reached
a high point on Tremont Street. The gulf, however, was quiet.
Then a remarkable thing happened. The wind suddenly shifted from the
north to the southeast, the hurricane increased in fury, and, picking up
the waters of the gulf, hurled them with crushing force against the four
miles of residences stretched along the beach. There was nothing in the
way of protection, and houses were knocked over like so many toy
structures.
By three o'clock the gulf had spread over the city and mingled in the
streets with the waters of the bay. The violence of the wind continued.
Higher and higher rose the water. Buildings began to collapse. Shrieks
of agony were heard. One family of five took refuge in four different
houses, abandoning each in turn just in time to save themselves.
Hundreds, struck by the flying wreckage, fell unconscious in the water.
SCENES OF HORROR
When night settled down over the city the whole bay side was in process
of destruction. Wreckage was thrown with the force of a catapult against
houses which still offered resistance. Electric light and gas plants
were flooded and the city was in darkness.
In the cemeteries the dead of years were washed from their graves and
carried across to the mainland. A tramp steamer was carried over to
Virginia Point, then sent like a shot through three bridges. The
steamers "Alamo" and "Red Cross" were dropped upon Pelican Flats, and
when the waves retreated were left high and dry upon the sand. Yachts
and sailboats were driven over the mainland and could be seen in the
grass far beyond Texas City. Railroad cars loaded and empty were carried
into the bay, and miles of track torn up and washed away.
THE RECEDING WATERS
Between ten and eleven the wind fell and the water began to recede,
almost as rapidly as it had come. Before daylight the streets were clear
of water, but covered with slime and choked with wreckage. It was not
necessary to go to the beach to find the dead. They lay thick along the
streets.
A Committee of Public Safety was organized, and all men, white and
black, were asked to assist in the removal of the dead. The
superstitious negroes refused, but were finally compelled at the muzzle
of guns to gather in the bodies. It was suggested that the burials be
made at sea. Society men, clubmen, millionaires, longshoremen and
negroes took up the work, loading the bodies on drays and conveying them
to barges. The dreadful procession lasted all of Sunday and Monday.
Three barge loads of dead were taken out to sea and given back to the
waves. The weights, however, were not properly attached, and soon the
corpses were back in the surf, washing on the beach.
After the storm the weather turned milder. By Monday the city reeked
with the smell of a charnel house and pestilence was in the air. The
bodies of dead animals lay in the streets; the waters of the bay and
gulf were thick with the dead. All the disinfectants in the city were
quickly consumed. An earnest appeal for more was sent to Houston and
other places. Tuesday a general cremation of the dead began. Trenches
were dug and lined with wood. The corpses were tossed in, covered with
more wood, saturated with oil, and set on fire. Later, bodies were
collected and placed in piles of wreckage, and the whole then given to
the flames. Men engaged in this horrible task frequently found relatives
and friends among the dead. The men wore camphor bags under their noses,
but frequently became so nauseated that they were forced to stop work.
The fire purified the air, however, and disinfectants began to come in
in answer to the appeal. The streets were covered with a solution of
lime, and carbolic acid was showered everywhere.
GALVESTON NOT THE ONLY SUFFERER
And not only Galveston was a sufferer in this storm. For fifty miles
along the coast, on both sides of the city, the storm found victims. The
waters of the sea were carried inland ten miles all along the coast. The
total loss of life in Galveston and near-by places amounted to 9,000;
the property damage to $30,000,000.
THE MISSISSIPPI ON A RAMPAGE
"The Mississippi River in flood," says a recent writer, "takes
everything with it. To watch the endless procession which the swift
current carries by is to see all the properties of tragedies. The
Mississippi in flood is the despoiler of homes. Houses come floating
down the stream, outbuildings, furniture and myriads of smaller things,
tossed by waves in the 'runs' or sailing on serenely in the broader
stretches. Great trees go by. They are evidence that the Mississippi has
asserted its majesty somewhere and has cut a new channel to please
itself, eating away bank, growth, and all. Carcasses of cows and horses
and dogs float down the stream, carrying a pair of buzzards, those
scavengers who have so much work to do after the floods have receded. It
is a terrible and a melancholy sight."
THE FLOOD OF 1912
In April and May, 1912, the Mississippi reached a height never before
equaled, and the great river went tearing through levee after levee on
its resolute course to the sea. The river reached a maximum width of
sixty miles, killed 1,000 persons, rendered 30,000 homeless, and caused
damage to the amount of $50,000,000.
By April 2d, Columbus, Missouri, was buried under fifteen feet of water,
and in some parts of the town residences were wholly submerged. New
Madrid was not much better off, and Hickman, Kentucky, looked like a
small city of Venice. President Taft sent a hurry call to Congress for
half a million dollars, and within fifteen minutes after his message was
read, the lower house had passed an appropriation bill and sent it to
the Senate, which laid everything else aside to give it right of way. By
April 5th, the Reelfoot Lake district, covering 150 square miles of
Kentucky farm land, was an inland lake and the river at Cairo, Illinois,
had risen to nearly fifty-four feet, the average depth from St. Louis to
New Orleans being ordinarily but nine feet. Cairo was for days
surrounded by the torrents from the Ohio and the Mississippi beating at
the levees, while to the north of the city factory buildings were
immersed to their roofs or even entirely covered. By April 7th, the
levee in Arkansas, seven miles south of Memphis, had a gap a mile long
and Lake County, Tennessee, had no ground above water but a strip six
miles long by four wide. By the middle of the month, the levees at
Panther Forest, Arkansas; Alsatia, Louisiana; and Roosevelt, Louisiana,
had succumbed, and a thousand square miles of fertile plantations were
from five to seven feet under water.
FARMS AND PLANTATIONS SUBMERGED
Rain-storm after rain-storm caused the stream to swell, undermined
dikes, and broke new crevasses all the way from Vicksburg to New
Orleans. Hundred of farmers and their families, a majority of them
negroes, were cut off and overwhelmed by the flood. For several weeks
the people of New Orleans were under the fear that a large part of the
city might be submerged and ruined. Near by vast sugar plantations were
under water, while the prosperous town of Moreauville was inundated.
Refugees' camps were established and relief work began. Many vessels
assisted the army. Pitiful stories of famished and suffering victims of
the flood were told, and the miles and miles of desolated country struck
horror to the heart. They have a pregnant saying down there: "Come hell
and high water." Some day, it is to be hoped, we are going to take the
force out of that expression.
DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE
Disaster by tornado is not so easy to avoid as disaster by flood. One of
the most destructive storms of recent years was that which swept over
Louisville, Kentucky, in the evening of March 27, 1890, killing 113
persons, injuring 200, and destroying property to the amount of
$2,500,000. The storm came from the southwest and cut a path through the
heart of the city three miles long and nearly a half mile wide. Nearly
every building in its course was leveled to the ground or otherwise
damaged. Outlying towns were also devastated by the storm, and flood
calamities occurred simultaneously along the Mississippi.
About eight o'clock the storm was raging with tremendous force. The rain
fell in sheets, the lightning was constant and vivid, the wind blew
ominously. The streets were soon miniature rivers, and telegraph and
telephone poles began to snap. By 8.30 there was alarm all over the
city, but before any measure of safety could be adopted the body of the
mighty tempest dashed itself on the houses along Fifteenth Street and
tore itself diagonally across the city, leaping the river at Front
Street to Jeffersonville.
The passage across the city was not continuous and in uniform direction,
but the storm lifted itself up, fell with furious force on a block, then
rolled over into adjacent blocks, when it rested a moment, then dashed
furiously up and forward again, launching to the right and left with
demoniacal whimsicality.
Everything it touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath
their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching
warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a
broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction
extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main
Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first
touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business
houses--the annihilated work of years. On the river the storm found full
sway. The tawny water of the swollen Ohio became a lake of seething
foam. Steamboat after steamboat was driven from its moorings and tossed
like a drop of spray in the boiling stream.
CITIZENS MADDENED WITH GRIEF
Almost immediately after the storm had passed thousands crowded into the
distressed district; maddened men and women fought and struggled through
the debris trying to find some loved relative or friend. From every side
arose the groans of the wounded and dying. About the Falls City Hotel
groups thronged waiting for news.
Fires burning in several places added to the horror, though no great
damage was done by these. Crushed and blackened ruins marked the spot of
the Union Depot, which collapsed during the storm, crushing a train
which was just ready to depart. Every building, tree and telegraph pole
in the district struck was leveled, and almost all the railroads
entering the city were obliged to suspend all passenger and freight
traffic.
RESCUE, RELIEF AND RECONSTRUCTION
The work of rescuing the mangled dead was bravely carried on the
following day and before many hours the American genius for
organization, order and action had met the demands of the overwhelming
disaster. While the dead were still lying awaiting burial, plans were
made to rebuild and resume again the work of life.
The local police and militia kept order. The city authorities and board
of trade organized relief corps. The brave spirit of self-reliance
triumphed over the appalling calamity. Money for relief was sent to the
city from many sources, and it is interesting to note that the citizens
of Johnstown, who had suffered from the great catastrophe of the
previous year, were among the first to offer help. They knew what
desolation meant.
THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO
A far more terrible story of death and destruction is that of the St.
Louis tornado of May 27, 1896, which lasted but half an hour, killed 306
persons and destroyed property to the amount of $12,000,000.
The same tornado visited many places in Missouri and Illinois, causing
an additional property loss of $1,000,000.
The sky grew black at 4 P. M., the sun was eclipsed in the whirl of
driving dust and dirt, mingled with the branches and leaves of trees,
the boards of buildings and other loose material torn off by the wind.
At times the wind blew eighty miles an hour. In that mad half hour,
while property was crumbling and hundreds of human lives being snuffed
out, thousands of maimed and bleeding persons were added to the awful
harvest of devastation.
FREAK DESTRUCTION
Over in East St. Louis, where the houses were all frail structures, the
destruction was greatest. The great Eads Bridge was twisted all out of
shape, and freight cars were tossed to and fro, tumbled into ditches and
driven sometimes into the fields many yards from where they had stood.
The great Vandalia freight house fell in a heap of utter ruin, burying
beneath it thirty-five men who had there sought refuge.
The swath cut was three blocks wide and four miles long. The top of the
bridge was knocked off as well as the big abutment. The Martell House
was blown into the Cokokia Creek and many were buried in the ruins.
To add to the horrors of the night the electric-light plants were
rendered incapable of service, and the gas lamps were also shut off,
leaving the city in utter darkness. Fire broke out in several portions
of the city, and the fire department was unable to make an effective
fight because of the choked condition of the streets and the large
number of firemen who were engaged in the imperative work of rescuing
the dead and wounded.
ANNIHILATION
The City Hospital, which fortunately survived the storm, was filled to
overflowing with the injured. In addition to those who were killed in
their houses and in the streets, scores of dead were carried away by the
waters of the Mississippi River. Many steamers on the levee went down
in the storm. From the "Great Republic," one of the largest steamers on
the lower river, not a man escaped. The word "annihilation" is perhaps
the only one that can adequately describe the awful work of the tornado.
The rising of the sun in the morning revealed a scene of indescribable
horror. The work of carrying out the maimed and dead immediately began,
but it was a task of big proportions, as many bodies were totally buried
under the debris. Hundreds of families were rendered homeless, and the
business portion of the community was almost in absolute ruin.
Lack of food added to the misery. Bread sold for fifteen cents a loaf. A
large number of military tents were shipped into the city and many
families found shelter in freight yards. The Ohio and Mississippi
railroad companies issued permits for the use of their empty cars.
Contributions to aid in the work of rebuilding and relief were received
and the city council voted $100,000.
It was several weeks before the city began to resume a normal existence.
The presence of armed men and endless piles of debris, the suspension of
traffic, the grief for departed dear ones, and the sight of the many
injured, all contributed to a condition of solemnity and sorrow. "The
memory of the strange and awful scenes that have been presented by East
St. Louis for the past three days," said one clergyman of the city,
"will live in the minds of its inhabitants for years. But our people are
too courageous and energetic to be deterred from repairing the physical
havoc wrought."
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PREVIOUS GREAT DISASTERS
FLOODS
Johnstown, Pa., breaking of the Conemaugh dam, May 31, 1889; 2,235
killed.
Galveston, Tex., tidal wave, September 8, 1900; 9,000 killed.
Mississippi Valley, May, 1912; 1,000 killed.
WIND STORMS
Adams County, Miss., May 7, 1840; 317 killed. Same county, June, 1842;
500 killed.
Louisville, Ky., March 27, 1890; 113 killed, 200 injured; property loss,
$2,500,000.
Cherokee, Buena Vista and Pocahontas Counties, Iowa, July 6, 1893, 89
killed; property loss, $250,000.
Little Rock, Ark., October 2, 1894; 4 killed; property loss, $500,000.
Denton and Grayson Counties, Tex., May 15, 1896; 78 killed and 150
injured; property loss, $165,000.
St. Louis and East St. Louis, Mo., May 27, 1896; 306 identified killed;
property loss, $12,000,000. Same tornado visited many places in Missouri
and Illinois, causing an additional property loss of $1,000,000.
West India hurricane, September 29 and 30, 1896, covering Florida,
Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia,
Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York; 114 killed; property loss,
$7,000,000.
Eastern Michigan, May 25, 1897; 47 killed, 100 injured; property loss,
$400,000.
Galveston hurricane, September 8, 1900; 9,000 killed; property loss,
$30,000,000; estimated wind velocity, 120 miles an hour.
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