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 employee of the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Company, at Dayton, over the long-distance telephone said scores had been drowned there.
"They're dying like rats in their homes; bodies are washing around the streets and there's no relief in sight," Purviance said.
MANY CREEP TO SAFETY BY CABLE
At Wyoming Station, on the South Side, where the National Cash Register Company centered its efforts at rescue, many saved their lives by creeping on a telephone cable, a hundred feet above the flood.
At first linemen crept along the cables, carrying tow ropes to which flat-bottomed boats were attached. When the flood became so fierce that the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw darkness fall and gave up hope of rescue.
Those willing to risk their lives in the attempt to rescue found themselves helpless in the face of the water.
The first to seek safety by sliding along the telegraph conduits was a man. Then came four women. The first of the women was Mrs. Luella Meyer. She was a widow with one son, a boy in knee-breeches.
He got out on the wire and with the agility of a cat was soon across. But Mrs. Meyers, when over the boiling torrent, swayed as though faint, slipped and the crowd stood with bated breath.
By a lucky chance her senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from nervous and physical exhaustion.
Four companies of the Third Regiment, Ohio National Guard, spent the night aiding the city officials in rescuing families in the flood-stricken districts. Telephone and railroad service was interrupted in every direction.
John Hadkins and James Hosay, privates of the Ohio National Guard, were drowned while in acts of rescue. The body of an elderly woman floated down near Wyoming Street in the afternoon, but the current was so swift that it could not be recovered.
The National Cash Register Company's plant, on a high hill, offered the only haven in the South End. Three women became mothers in the halls of its office buildings during the night.
In the woodworking department of the National Cash Register Company boats were being turned out at the rate of ten an hour, and these were rushed to where the waters had crossed Main Street in a sort of gully.
But the waters crept up and the strength of the current was far too strong for the crude punts, though they were the best that could be made in a hurry.
Trip after trip was made and hundreds of the refugees were taken from this stretch of houses.
JOHN H. PATTERSON, CASH REGISTER HEAD, LEADS RELIEF
Although John H. Patterson, president of the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, which employs more than 7,100 persons, is nearly sixty-nine years old, and has led a life of unusual activity, he was out in a rowboat tugging at the oars and personally helping in the work of rescue. His two children, Frederick and Miss Dorothy, both in their early twenties, likewise were so engaged.
When despatches came from Dayton late at night saying "the only organized relief movement is that which is being conducted by the National Cash Register Company," those who knew the fighting characteristics of the head of the big corporation were not surprised to receive the additional information that Mr. Patterson as usual was conducting the business of rescue and relief in person.
The Dayton despatches in relating that young Frederick Patterson "is leading rescue parties" and that Miss Dorothy, "dressed in old clothes and her hair streaming with water, stood in the rain for hours receiving refugees," gave a notion that the children are one with the sire.
EMPLOYEES ASSIST IN RELIEF
The Cash Register plant is outside the flood zone. As soon as the waters rushed upon the city John Henry Patterson turned his entire force into a relief organization. Every wheel was stopped in the Cash Register plant early on Tuesday morning and the employees were set to work by Mr. Patterson to help the sufferers.
Mr. Patterson bought up all the available food and had it carted to his plant to feed the homeless. Straw was quickly strewn on the factory floors, thus affording dry sleeping places for more than one thousand at night. Every employee of the corporation capable of working on boats was put to work at boat building.
Mr. Patterson is said to have made a promise long ago to his wife, who was Katherine Beck, a school teacher of Brookline, Mass., when she was dying, that he would give special care to the comfort and welfare of his women and girl employees. The dining rooms in the big plant, the rest and recreation rooms and other architectural comforts provided for the women employees as a result of this promise came in very well in the rescue work. The dining rooms and the rest and recreation rooms all were used as eating halls in helping the sufferers.
While Mr. Patterson was out pulling at the oars of one of his boats thirty-one of his company's automobiles were meeting the craft to hurry the refugees to the Cash Register plant and to dry clothing, food and beds.
Mr. Patterson sent out an appeal for immediate food supplies and for doctors and medicine. By night three thousand homeless were housed in improvised quarters in the Cash Register offices.
GIRL IN MAN'S CLOTHING
"What is your name?" asked the registrars who received the refugees at the National Cash Register plant of a slender young person in men's clothes.
"Nora Thuma," was the reply.
"Nora?" they asked.
"Yes, I'm a girl," was the answer.
She had put on a man's suit in order to cross the perilous span of wires unhampered by skirts.
She came in with Ralph Myers, his wife and their little baby. Myers had climbed a telephone wire pole first. He let down a rope to his wife, who tied to it a meal sack which contained their baby, three months old.
Myers pulled the rope with its precious burden up and then let it down again to aid his wife to ascend from her perilous position.
With the meal sack over his shoulder and his wife holding on to the two wires he walked along the cable a full block before he reached safety.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. A typical scene on the outskirts of Dayton. Here scores of houses were completely washed from their foundations and many of the inhabitants were drowned
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Copyright by the International News Service. A view taken at Ludlow and Second Streets, Dayton, after the water had receded, showing one phase of the devastation resulting from the flood
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Scenes of indescribable horror were reported by the rescuers under Brigadier-General George H. Wood. Among those who perished were said to have been ten members of the Ohio National Guard who were guarding a bridge.
One man marooned with his family on the roof of his home shot and killed his wife and three children and then himself rather than suffer death in the flames, according to a report received by J. J. Munsell, employment superintendent of the National Cash Register Company, from a man who actually saw the occurrence. The bodies floated away on the flood.
Rescuers tried to get to a raft that bore a man and four women that whirled like a spool in the rapid waters. Then suddenly the raft was sucked down in the water and another chapter was added to the tragedy.
WOMAN LEAPS WITH BABY
George H. Schaefer, a rescuer who went out into the flood with a skiff and saved a woman and baby, told of his perilous trip.
"A house that had been torn from its foundation came floating up behind us," said Schaefer. "The woman was frightened. I told her there was no danger.
"Suddenly she stood up and jumped over with her baby in her arms. She went straight down and never came up again."
Then there was the horror that William Riley, a salesman for the National Cash Register Company, saw.
"We saw a very old woman standing at the window of a house waiting for rescue," said Riley. "We rowed up to her. Suddenly the house parted and the woman was engulfed. It was the last we saw of her."
There was the man who was nearly rescued. He had stepped into the skiff and then walked back into his home, which a short time later floated away with him. Incidents of this sort were multiplied.
John Scott ascended a telegraph pole and guided across the cable to places of safety men, women and children rescued from flooded houses.
Scott had guided a dozen persons across the swaying bridges of wire when an explosion that started a fire occurred. The shock knocked Scott from the pole and he fell into a tree.
"The last I saw of him he was trying to get into the window of an abandoned house by way of one of the branches of the tree," said Frank Stevens, a fellow employee of Scott. "The house was in the path of the fire."
APPEALS FOR AID
Thousands of those who were fortunate enough to escape the first rush of the waters were fed on short rations, and appeals for help were sent out by many of the leading men of the city.
Three carloads of foodstuffs arrived from Xenia, but there was no chance to deliver them to the victims of the flood until the following day.
CRUEL NEED FOR AN ARK
Frank Brandon, vice-president of the Dayton, Lebanon and Cincinnati Railroad, succeeded during the night in getting communication for a short time from Dayton to Lebanon. He said that the situation was appalling and beyond all control.
"According to my advices, the situation beggars description," said Mr. Brandon. "What the people need most of all is boats. The water is high in every street and assistance late this afternoon was simply out of the question. My superintendent at Dayton told me that at least sixty had perished and probably a great many more, at the same time assuring me that unless something that closely approached a miracle happened the death list would run considerably higher. We are now rigging up several special trains and will make every effort possible to get into Dayton tonight."
It was on these scenes of indescribable horror that the shades of night closed down.