Colonel Wilson, of the Paymaster's Department, was made financial officer as well as treasurer of the relief funds. Under his direction and the Governor's supervision the Ohio relief commission prepared for a War Department audit, as is required by the Red Cross Society. The Governor demanded that there should be but one relief committee in the state, and to that end the local committees formed were subordinate to the state commission.
INCIDENTS OF HEROISM
The work of rescue brought out many striking incidents of personal heroism.
From two o'clock Tuesday afternoon until nearly nightfall Wednesday Charles W. Underwood, a carpenter of this city, held two babes in his arms while he clung to the branch of a tree near the Greenlawn Cemetery, where he had been carried fully a mile by the current. One babe was his own, the other belonged to a neighbor, and as he clung to them he saw his own twelve-year-old daughter on another limb of the same tree weaken from exposure and die, her frail body swaying limply as it hung over the branch. He also saw a woman refugee in the same tree weaken and fall into the swirling waters. Underwood and the babes were finally rescued.
Two hundred and thirty-three souls marooned in the building of the Sun Manufacturing Company succeeded in sending out a note by messenger, praising the work of John Brady, who, with a skiff, after his home was swept away, rescued two hundred men, women and children and brought them to the Sun plant.
"Track out at Columbus because of floods," was the message that Albert E. Dutoit, a Hocking Valley Railway engineer, read when his train was stopped Wednesday at Walbridge, near Toledo. His heart gave a bound, for he knew his family must be threatened. He detached his engine from the train and started on his race with death. Like mad he shot his engine across the country between there and Columbus. All night Wednesday he tried to get through the military lines and succeeded on Thursday. He induced men in motor boats to rescue his family. In a few more moments, he had his eight-months-old baby in one arm with the other around the waist of his wife. The reunion brought tears of sympathy to the eyes of the rescuers.
Mrs. Emil Wallace, living southwest of the city, in the lowlands, ran toward a hill when she saw the onrushing waters. She reached safety just as the water was up to her neck. Her home was submerged.
A street car was washed a quarter of a mile away from the track. The conductor and half a dozen passengers were drowned like rats in a trap before they could get out of the car.
Two unknown men lost their lives while trying to save a twelve-year-old girl from a raft floating near Greenlawn Avenue. On horseback the men fought desperately against the swift current of the flood until at last they were carried away.
Nearly one hundred babies were born in the flood district and in the refuge camps between Tuesday morning and Saturday. In the majority of cases neither the mothers nor the babies received any medical attention. Many of the babies died from exposure.