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.