Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever (18 page)

Given the destruction, one can hardly blame Purviance or anyone for overestimating the number of deaths in the flood. But Mother Nature was dealing with people, not rats. That there weren't more deaths was due to peoples' ingenuity and the will to use every strategy they could come up with to survive.

In Brookville, Indiana, John Bunz, a 45-year-old junk dealer, was wading through water on the first floor of his home when he lost his balance and found himself underwater. He scrambled to the surface for air and bolted for the stairs as the water chased him. If he didn't quite realize what had happened—his house had been ripped off its foundation and was floating down the Whitewater River—he would figure it out soon enough.

That Bunz and his 78-year-old mother, Margaret, who lived with him, weren't killed seconds or minutes later was because the house came to a sudden stop when it lodged itself into a tree. But after that fortunate break, everything they did was all about trying to outwit or at least outlast the flood. As the water entered the bedroom and began to fill it, Bunz then propped up his mother as high as possible, holding her in his arms, with the icy water eventually reaching his shoulders. He kept her that way for the next seven hours until he realized he had lost her. Bunz was rescued another two hours later.

Grover Brown, a 24-year-old railroad worker living in Cambridge City, Indiana, also floated down the Whitewater River on this day—for sixty miles. Twenty-three hours later, he wound up in Harrison, Ohio, where twelve people reportedly died, and the water was twelve feet deep on the well-trafficked State Street. He spent his time on the river, clinging to the floor of a building that was swept away, and he could have easily died, and by all rights, he should have.

Brown was stark naked for those sixty miles, having taken off some of his clothing to lighten his load when in the water, helping his family escape. Then he lost the rest of his wardrobe from the pull of the river. He came close to freezing to death, and he would have, except that he found some drowned chickens in the water, plucked their feathers, and covered himself as best he could. He was probably too frozen to be embarrassed when two men later pulled him off the roof and away from the water. He couldn't have been too scarred by the experience, though, or at least he must have liked the looks of Harrison. After marrying a woman named Irene Delacroix later in the year, who probably did not see the chicken-feather incident, they moved to Harrison.

James Wrinkle, a wealthy manufacturer of washtubs, created a boat out of his washtubs and was credited with saving 125 of his neighbors. The river had chased him up to the second story of his office building, and as the water swirled around his ankles, Wrinkle found himself staring at a pile of about fifty washtubs. He hastily nailed together eight of them, creating a boat that allowed for seven passengers, and then he grabbed a long pole with a hook on the end, which he normally used for reaching high objects.

With it, he braved the mad waters, using the pole with the hook to grab onto tree branches, pushing him through the river-streets and allowing him to reach houses in his neighborhood. He ended up making thirty trips, taking anyone he saw to high ground.

“Well, I couldn't leave those people to drown, could I?” he responded when a committee of city officials later showed up to thank him for his service. Then he waved them off.

Throughout Ohio, Indiana, and parts of Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, many homeowners were collectively preparing a clever flood-fighting tactic that undoubtedly saved many lives and homes. For those who didn't want to leave their house or no longer could, due to the water surrounding them, many people started preparing their homes on the fly. It could be agonizing and against every homeowner's instincts to welcome in the water, but that's what many families did. While Charles Adams was concerned about currents moving through his house, many people willingly opened their front and back doors and windows of their home, and then—most painfully—some even cut a hole in the ceiling of the first floor.

The water was going to come into the house whether the doors and windows were shut or not. Boarding the house and making it watertight was not only extremely difficult and virtually impossible, it actually just increased the odds that the river would eventually push the house out of its way. By opening everything up, the river could come into the house and—with any luck—let it stay put. The hole in the ceiling meant that if the water rose higher than the first floor, it would continue to have somewhere to go, rather than pushing against the ceiling and eventually destroying the floorboards of the second floor.

That was the scenario at the Zang family in Hamilton, Ohio. Sixty years after the flood, Marie Zang Barnhorn recalled that her father first opened the cellar door so the water would run through the house and not push it off the foundation.

“When the water came up to the second floor, Pop punched a hole in the ceiling, and we climbed up and sat on the rafters,” said Zang. “He took the doors off and put them up there so we wouldn't fall through.”

Marie and her family were quite comfortable at first. Her mother had already been cooking dinner that morning when they decided to
retreat upstairs, and they brought up sauerkraut, potatoes, and pork. It was a feast, but it would be their only food for the next forty-eight hours.

Another strategy that Fred Zang employed was that he hung out the second-story window and kicked logs away from the house, so they wouldn't build up and eventually knock the house off the foundation. One can't argue with Zang's strategy. His family lived through the flood; two neighbors on the same street drowned in their own homes.

Bill Thompson, then six years old, wrote about the experience of being in the flood in Hamilton, Ohio for his company's newsletter in 1959. His family could see a suspension bridge washed away from their home and much more.

“We saw houses and sheds floating down the river,” Thompson wrote. “Neighboring houses were broken away as the water kept coming with added depth and speed. As the water began seeping through our second floor, we moved to the attic, using doors across rafters for beds.”

Eventually, a floating house leaned against the Thompson home, which turned out to be a good thing. It broke the current. “Folks from that dwelling and another broke through their roofs and climbed through a hole made in our roof,” wrote Thompson. “There were about thirty-five praying souls in the same attic by crest time. That crest found the water half way up to the second story windows.”

It took persistence and patience to thwart the flood. Another Hamilton resident, Clara Clements, wife of a police detective, would have been on the force herself if this had been another era. She was certainly innovative. Five people, including Mrs. Clements, were upstairs in her and her husband's house, and everyone wanted to escape to the neighbor's house. Eugene Mueller's home seemed far sturdier.

Clara Clements came up with the idea of folding a large carpet into three thicknesses. Then she and her group inserted long poles and, with the Muellers on the other side helping, stretched the carpet bridge over the fifteen-foot gap. Everyone nailed the carpet to the roof on both sides, and Clara and the others safely crossed over.

George Timmerman, the Dayton moulder who was assured by his neighbors that a little ankle-deep water didn't mean a thing, found himself on the second floor of a house when the flood wall came. He was in a neighbor's house, a house he had never been in, seeking
refuge with a mother and three children.
*
Within about an hour, as the water climbed higher, they retreated to the attic, shouting for help. Within about another hour, a rescuer came in a boat. It wasn't easy, and escaping the flood took some initiative and a lot of luck, but a lot of people did it.

That was hardly the end of Timmerman and company's ordeal; rather, it was just the beginning. The rescuer had trouble steering the boat in the current, which wasn't just fast-moving water but a soup of wagons and buggies, dead horses, dead bodies, and driftwood. For a while, Timmerman was sure he, the family of four, and the rescuer would all capsize. But the rescuer steered Timmerman, the mother, and the kids near the top of a porch. They climbed onto that and bid farewell to the rescuer, who felt he could manage the boat, especially now that it was lighter.

Timmerman, the mother, and the children scurried into the attic of someone's abandoned home in an apartment building. It seemed safe enough for the moment, and they even managed to find some food to eat, so they were at least in good company. All of the surrounding homes had people in them, including the building across the street, the one with the sign O. G. Saettel's. For the moment, they decided they would sit put and wait out the flood. Not that they had much choice.

12:12
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., Hamilton, Ohio

The Black Street Bridge was the first bridge in the city to collapse. About three minutes later, the High Street Bridge, with high school student J. Walter Wack watching, buckled against the current and the pressing mountain of debris, which was now pinned against the bridge. Then the wires on the bridge began to snap.

“Everyone ran like hell,” recalled Wack, himself making tracks for his house.

Elizabeth Hensley Hand, in 1988, told her local paper, “I remember seeing houses floating down the river with people on the roofs waving white sheets for help. Some of the houses hit the bridges and shattered.
Horses were floating downstream, trying to swim, but drowning, too.” Seventy-five years later, Mrs. Hand said, she would think about the flood and still cry.

As resident and jewelry store owner Raymond McComb would write his father: “The water came right through the business section of town, sweeping houses and barns, horses and cows right through High Street.”

The Great Miami River swamped McComb's store in turn, knocking over his displays, invading his safe, and destroying the contents.

12:28
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., Hamilton, Ohio

A second bridge went down.

In the midst of the chaos, councilman, concerned citizen, and man with possible extrasensory perception J. Henry Welsh, still in the midst of warning people, hadn't heeded his own advice. He found himself caught in the flood despite being quite a bit inland at Tenth and High Streets and had to swim to a place of safety.

Middletown, Ohio, afternoon

Middletown's residents, hearing about what was happening up north and warily watching the river, anticipated what was to come.

Daniel Snider, the city's local Ford dealer who proudly displayed his five new Model-T cars in West Middletown, carefully jacked up his five cars a foot off the ground and put the cars in a coal shed. The 36-year-old Snider tied the shed to a tree, fully believing that at the most, the shed might wind up being a few inches deep in water. He then went to join his wife, Mae, and their three-year-old daughter, at the house, which he also assumed was free and clear of the river.

The tree was destroyed, or perhaps the rope broke, but, some way or the other, the shed sailed down the river. Snider later retrieved his cars, but they were in no condition to drive.
*
Snider miscalculated on a number of things that day, but he was the only one in the area who
had the foresight to own a boat. His parents always owned one and insisted their son did, too, “just in case,” they said. Daniel's dad was in the business of making wagons but understood the value of a good boat when living near a river.

When the Great Miami River spilled into West Middletown, Snider made the rounds to houses in his canoe, passing by their second-story windows and taking families to dry land to a home owned by a family named Childs, who must have lived on a hill, for their residence was becoming something of a relief station. But Snider was so busy working to save his neighbors that he almost forgot or couldn't reach his own wife and three-year-old daughter. By the time he arrived at his own house, he was able to paddle through the front door and up to the stairway, where Mae and his daughter were anxiously waiting.

1
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., Hornell, New York

Although Ohio and Indiana were suffering the most from the flood, parts of western New York were now seeing their waterways overflowing to dangerous levels. The Canisteo River overflowed its banks north of Hornell, and two hours later, Canacadea Creek, which flows through the city, also left its channel. The waters wouldn't destroy the town or region to the level of what was happening along the Miami River, but one unlucky fellow by the name of Eugene Porter, a farmer on the aptly named Big Creek Road, was surprised by the current and lost his life.

Sometime in the afternoon, New Castle, Pennsylvania

Neshannock Creek, which connects up to the Shenango River in New Castle, remained in its bed. The hundred-mile-long Shenango River, however, began slowly making its way across the main streets of New Castle.

The police force fanned out across the city where they could, helping residents flee to higher ground. Still, the community functioned mostly as normal. School was in session all day. Most people retained power. There seemed to be no reason to fret yet.

Dayton, afternoon

Slowly but surely, John H. Patterson found himself running a rescue center instead of a cash register manufacturing business.

His company's thirty-one cars were being utilized wherever possible throughout the city; and while seven square miles of Dayton was underwater, there were ample rolling hills where cars were able to carry passengers away from the flooding and to shelters. His boats were in high demand as well, and the NCR headquarters atop a hill on Wyoming Street were perfectly situated as a rescue hub. It was already a city landmark, and so word of mouth spread. If you were in trouble, come here.

Some people followed the telephone cables leading up to the campus of office buildings. As was the case around the city, there were often six, eight, or more telephone wires, strung out so that one could literally grab hold of a wire, plant their feet on another, and very carefully walk across the telephone wires. It wasn't terribly dangerous, as long as you didn't fall into the still-rushing current below, or happen to touch a damaged wire.