Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever (41 page)

Both men seemed delirious from the shock and the cold, and after searching the house for a place to light a fire and coming up empty, it was clear that Henderson and Rohner couldn't just leave them there, nor could they take them anywhere far either.

Fortunately, a woman in an upstairs window, three houses away, shouted that she had a fire going in her room and they could bring the men there. Henderson and Rohner did, taking each man one at a time on the skiff, making their way as carefully as possible to the
woman's house. Once the officers were with the woman, whose name we may never know, Henderson and Rohner then rowed back to the tin mill on an errand for coal. They brought it back for the woman's fire, so they could keep it going. Gross, and especially Thomas, were fine with where they were. They didn't want to go anywhere. Thomas recognized his limits. He was officially off the job.

Henderson and Rohner then bid the three farewell and boarded their skiff. It isn't clear if Henderson and Rohner were asked to go to the police station and report the whereabouts of Thomas and Gross, or if they simply took the initiative. Either way, it would have been better if they had simply rowed back to the factory. Henderson and Rohner rowed their skiff to dry land and then headed to the police station, carrying their skiff with them in case it was needed, and probably fearing that someone might take it in a city where boats were now very valuable. They came to the Gardner Avenue Bridge, which looked unsteady but crossable.

After making it across, Henderson and Rohner found an officer, Lew Thomas, and informed him of the whereabouts of Thomas Thomas and John Gross. The two men made it clear that they were safe and warm and should remain in the house until the water had settled down.

Then they left, returning to the Gardner Avenue Bridge around 6
P
.
M
. Henderson and Rohner once again mulled over whether they should cross the bridge once again, and then the decision was made for them. It collapsed.

Feeling very lucky and shaken, they found another bridge belonging to a railroad and traveled as far as they could until they put their skiff back into the water, rowing to the tin factory they were now calling home. They felt very good about how they had spent their afternoon and that everyone knew Thomas and Gross were safe and sound. They had no idea that what they had actually done was inspire people to form a rescue party.

But that is what happened. Two police officers went after Thomas and Gross, a national guardsman named Fred Moore and another man of very questionable moral character, the one who had been taking money before saving flood victims: William Kerr.

Evening, March 27, Portsmouth, Ohio

As the
Portsmouth Times
would observe fifty years later, everyone in this river city, with the Ohio
River to the south of them and the Scioto River to their west, was pretty apathetic when it came to devising escape plans in case their homes were suddenly underwater. The residents were well aware that they could be flooded out and had faced down many floods, but that was exactly why nobody worried. The city had a 62-foot flood wall, and one local official had recently theorized that maybe someday there would be a fifty-foot flood at the maximum. He apparently forgot or was unaware of the 1884 flood that had reached 66.3 feet on February 12.

Still, for those who remembered that flood, that was one for the record books. It seemed inconceivable that the river would ever get that high again.

And while the rest of the state was worried about its bridges, Portsmouth had its brand new $75,000 steel bridge crossing the Scioto River, and they were confident that it could survive anything mother nature threw at it.

But during the evening and night of March 27, the Ohio River rose to 67.9 feet. Some people reported seeing a tidal wave, fifteen feet high, going down the Ohio River and smashing into the Kentucky shore. The river soon poured over the flood wall, into downtown Portsmouth, and for anyone thinking of escaping across that steel bridge—no such luck. Perhaps to the concrete industry's collective smug satisfaction, the Scioto River knocked Portsmouth's pride and joy into oblivion.

And yet, while the flood wall was nowhere near high enough to save Portsmouth from flooding, it was high enough to save the community from being blotted off the map—and high enough to save lives. There was a stampede of horse-and-buggies, galloping up into the hills, and a swarm of people, grownups and children, racing down the streets and sidewalks, carrying kerosene lanterns and lamps, all running for higher ground. Those who didn't feel they could make it that far knew the drill, running for their second floor or the roof. Horses left alone were drowned in their stalls. Buildings, many of which were boarded up by shopkeepers hoping to save their plate glass, were overturned. Everything that wasn't nailed down became part of a muddy sea of debris. The waters were as high as nine feet in downtown Portsmouth, and an estimated 4,500 houses were flooded. By the time it was all over, the mayor estimated that there was half a million dollars in damages.

But thanks in much part to the flood wall, which bought everyone more time and kept much of the river out of the community and from swamping the city even more than it did, not one man, woman, or child in Portsmouth was killed.

Sometime during the evening, Alto Pass, Illinois

While the rivers, creeks, and streams weren't flooding elsewhere as dramatically as they had been in Indiana and Ohio, the water was still picking off its victims in other states. It was around this time, in Alto Pass, Illinois, that George and Ella Van Cavaness, farmers and parents of five children, discovered that their two-year-old was missing and found their child's body floating in Hudgeon's Creek.

7:30
P
.
M
., New Castle, Pennsylvania

William Kerr and Fred Moore reached the house where Alderman Gross and Officer Thomas Thomas were. By the time they reached the home, there wasn't a ray of light left in the sky. Thomas and Gross were roused awake and taken to the boat. It was never said, but one imagines the kind and hospitable woman who sheltered them was left behind.

That Kerr wasn't the most honest person in the world doesn't, of course, mean that he meant any harm toward Thomas. They may have been best friends. He might have been subconsciously trying to make amends for his sleazy behavior in the last couple of days. He may have been ordered by a superior to go after Thomas. But the fact remains that Thomas would have been better off sleeping through the night. He was so weak that he couldn't sit up in the boat.

Gross felt ill as well, but he managed to at least sit while Kerr and Moore rowed in the choppy water. There was no light, save a searchlight that someone was operating, which moved up and down the muddy creek. They were heading toward a railroad bridge, the same one that, several hours earlier, Thomas and Gross's original rescuers, Henderson and Rohner, had crossed on their return trip for the police station. Near the bridge was a slew of submerged railroad cars, and the current was sweeping everything it could underneath, including the boat that Kerr and Moore were rowing.

It capsized, and everyone pitched into the river. Knowing Thomas's condition, Gross lunged for his friend and managed to place him on the roof of a boxcar, just barely over the rushing water. Gross grabbed on to something—but he would never remember what—a branch from a tree? Part of the boxcar? Gross hung on and looked back at Thomas, horrified by what he saw.

In front of his eyes, the current knocked Thomas's limp body off the boxcar, and he was swiftly pulled under the water.

Gross had a quick thought that he would be joining him soon. Then everything went black.

FRIDAY,

MARCH 28, 1913

Chapter Eighteen

Water Retreating

Friday, March 28, 1913

Midnight, Columbus

Ernest Bicknell's train pulled into Columbus. After five days of being on a train, first heading to Omaha and then back toward Dayton, the Red Cross's national director was at last getting closer to his destination.

Morning, Hagerstown, Maryland

The Potomac climbed its banks and hit the streets. The residents were bracing for it and most of them, well acquainted with what was happening in the states to the west of them, were ready. As the local paper put it, using their city's nickname: “Harrystown soon knew what it was to be—Omahahawed and Daytonized. This morning early, the people in Liberty Street were awakened by the lapping of gentle waves at their door steps. They hastily arose, as did people on Jefferson and Valentine, all those streets being in the midst of the flooded district and found their cellars abrim with yellow wavelets and their gardens flooded and no escape except by waiting.”

But Hagerstown was quite lucky compared to Omaha, Fort Wayne, and Dayton. While there were thousands of acres submerged and a lot of damage, there were no deaths in the city from the flood, and after about noon, when the Potomac River reached a high of eighteen feet, the water levels began to slowly recede.

Hagerstown wasn't the only community in Maryland affected by the flood. Cumberland, sixty-seven miles to the west, had considerable damage to its farm lands thanks to Evitts Creek, rising to higher levels than anyone could remember. The Hampshire Southern Railroad, which ran forty miles from Romney to Petersburg, was expected to close for several days due to a bridge being knocked into oblivion. Another railroad based out of Maryland, the Baltimore and Ohio, had to close all of its tracks after a mudslide near Connellsville, Pennsylvania.

And while almost everyone in Maryland came through the flood unscathed, one man did not: John Hoke of Emmitsburg. Exactly what happened will never be known, but it's safe to say he wouldn't have been a casualty of the flood if, the evening before, he hadn't been drinking.

The night of March 27, Hoke, the head carpenter at Mt. St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, had to cross Tom's Creek at Hartman's Bridge to reach his house. He probably would have made it, had he not stopped after work for a drink or two … or maybe five.

A friend of his walked with him through the town most of the way, but then Hoke must have felt that he was sober enough to get home on his own.

The friend never saw Hoke again.

The next day, Hoke didn't turn up for work, and his wife was frantic. If she was able to call their older daughter living in Hagerstown, or John's brother or sister, they, too, were panicked. All day, everyone wondered. Where was John Hoke?

Late in the day, a little boy in the town provided the answer. He revealed to presumably his parents that earlier that morning, he saw a man in waist-deep water, clinging to a bush and shouting for help. Probably frightened by what he saw, the little boy said nothing to anyone all day. Or maybe he was on the fast track to becoming a future demented serial killer.

Once people learned that Hoke had been alive in the morning, they started hazarding the guess that the inebriated carpenter had decided not to go home but to sleep near the creek. When he woke up, he was surrounded by water and, either frightened or still hung over, wasn't able to get out of his predicament before the current swept him away.

Morning in New Castle, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas

The worst may have been over for Dayton, but other communities were still in a pitched battle against their rivers and creeks. Residents in Cairo, Illinois were preparing for trouble with the Mississippi River, and down south along the Mississippi in Memphis, Tennessee, the city was warning everyone to prepare for a flood. This was, of course, the big difference between the start of the flood and the end. People had enough warning to get out of harm's way.

Yet not everyone could. Samuel Whitlatch, rowing a boat on Main Street in Parkersburg, West Virginia, capsized and drowned. Parkersburg in general was having its share of problems on this day: the county jail was flooding, and the prisoners, hopefully none of them too dangerous, were being released.

In New Castle, everyone woke up to read in the morning papers that their state still appeared to be falling apart. People in the lowlands of Pittsburgh were fleeing for higher ground as the Allegheny River climbed and at least one man probably died. The streets of Bridgewater, Pennsylvania were five feet underwater. The Beaver River was climbing five inches every hour, and there was now a chasm where the Sharon Bridge, which connected New Brighton and Fallston, used to be. But what must have sent everyone reeling was the news that a beloved police officer, husband, and father of three had drowned. Thomas Thomas and a five-year-old boy who had fallen into Neshannock Creek were New Castle's only casualties. That there hadn't been more was arguably due to Thomas Thomas's efforts, who essentially gave his own life for the cause.

As for the alderman, John H. Gross, he woke up in his own bed, a physician at his side. The doctor had been there all night, tending to him. Gross soon learned that Fred Moore had been taken to the Shenango Valley Hospital and would live. He learned that William Kerr had a bad gash on his head and was suffering from a severe cold. And then doctors confirmed what he already knew, that Thomas Thomas was no more.

His body would be retrieved in a few hours, at noon, lodged underneath a beam under Box Car Number 7140. A grim congregation of seven police officials was on hand to assist with pulling out the body, including Lew Thomas, the man who had initially learned that Thomas and Gross were recuperating in a home and had passed the news on to the mayor, who apparently was the well-meaning one who had initiated organizing the ill-fated rescue party.

Throughout the day, Omaha, Nebraska

In every age and era, there is always someone out there who is happy to exploit a tragedy. Police officers and bystanders started noticing that several attractive young women and teenage girls, who were homeless and penniless in the wake of the tornado, were being approached by some well-dressed men who were offering the ladies some well-paid jobs in Chicago and St. Louis.