The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado. Logan Marshall
Storms By Chester Firkins And you are still the Master. We have reared Cities and citadels of seeming might, But in the passing of a single night You rend them unto ruin. We who feared Nor flood nor wind nor wreckage fire-seared, We shudder helpless in the thunder-light; The garners cherished and the souls endeared Emptied and sudden-slaughtered in our sight. You, whom the Cave Man battled, whom we call Nature, because we know no better name, Goddess of gentleness and torture-flame, Still are you despot; still are we the thrall; Still we can only wait what Fate may fall From your wild pinions that no man can tame. Nor gold or gain, nor battlement or wall Shall guard us from the primal flood and flame. Our castled cities tower to your skies. 'Gainst wind and wave we pile our stone and mold. Powered of genius, panoplied of gold, We build the bastions of our high emprise. But yet, but let the plunging torrent rise, The winds awake on glutted rivers rolled— We die as the reft robin fledgeling dies— We perish as the beast in jungles old. We dream that we are conquerors of Earth; We think that we are mighty, that we dare Scorn your grim power—till we glimpse the flare Of burning Death 'mid holiness of Birth. What is our godliness and wisdom worth Against your strength embattled unaware? You are the Master, ever, everywhere, Deadly and gentle o'er the wide World's girth.
CHAPTER II
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.
NORTHERN PART OF DAYTON, AND WATER COURSES WHICH OVERWHELMED THE CITY
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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