Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1891 — AWFUL OVERFLOWS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AWFUL OVERFLOWS.

TERRIBLE DEVASTATION BY RIVER FLOODS. Ohio and Mississippi Mis'llty Monsters of Destruction —Periodical Overflows Inevitable— Engineering Skill of No Avail— A Short History of Past Floods.

VERY year that passes, as this year has so far done, without b r i n ur i ng wholesale devastation along the entire course of the Mississippi, from Cairo to New Orleans, is cause ior universal thanksgiving. This season the only important break, some t!00 feet in width, was in the levee opposite New Cr'eans,

and did immense damage to the White House Plantation. The detailed history of the Ohio and Mississippi River floods is one of the most thrilling chapters in the annals of the country, and the problem of preventing these disastrous overflows is perhaps the severest problem in engineering that confronts the skiil and wisdom of engineers and statesmen of to-day. The Ohio floods are characterized by height, power and suddenness; those of the Mississippi by length of duration. The highest, largest, and most powerful tidal waves of the ocean fail short. In those particulars, of the great flood waves of the Ohio. The highest point yet registered by an Ohio flood, within the limits of actual •record, was made by the flood of 1884, which registered 71 feet 1 inch at the Cincinnati gauge. The Indians, however, have a tradition that there was a flood in 1787 which reached the tremendous height of 100 feet: also, that there were high floods in 1774, 1789, and 1792, the latter reaching 00 feet. Statistics go to show that floods of excessive height arc not to be expected oftener than once in about twenty-five years The unprecedented flood of 1834 following, just one year and one day, that of 1883—the highest in half a century—presented a strange exception to -the rule. The detailed information concerning "the flood of 1832 is very meager. Cincinnati at that time contained about 28,000 inhabitants. As the river rose steadily for ten days, beginning Feb. 18. the Inhabitants had time to flee to the hills which surrounded that city, thus renderdag the loss of 'life very small. The few remaining pioneers of the Queen City who participated in that flight and assisted in rescuing the.ncrsons and property of their fellow-citizens give graphic pictures of the exciting scenes and hair-breadth escapes which then took place. Tnere was scarcely a house in the city which escaped a deep baptism in the turbid current. The terrible flood of 1883 was caused 'by two severe tain storms, which felt •upon the hard frozen ground about its ‘-headquarters in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Much of this territory ts mountainous. The heityy rainfall, which wou’d have naturally beCh much absorbed by the soil, all rushed down the steep, frozen mountain sides as from off a roof, and emptied itself into the Ohio, with scarcely any hindrance or loss by absorption. The storm began with the month and continued for practically two weeks. The river reached its maximum height on the 13th of tiie month. The first cities to feei the devastating power of tin floods were Titusville, Oil City and Pittsburg. There were several ■lives lost at Titusvillo. Not only did ■every city on the Ohio and its tributaries suffer more or less, but also almost every city in the Ohio Valley. The overflow of the Cuyahoga River despoiled nearly two million dollars’ worth of property in Cleveland,, which is located at its mouth. At Cincinnati the water covered tlireo whole squares in the heart of the city, disabling the engines at the water works, and submerging the gas works. Not less than thirty thousand laborers were thrown out of einplo> rnent by the flooding of some two hundred and fifty wholesale and commission houses and other Industries lying nearest the river front. One of the tragedies of the •flood was the falling of the Cin"Cinnatl and Southern depot. Its foundations became undermined and its •walls fell, burying a number of people t beneath them, in a depth of about forty sfeet of water. The military barracks at Newport, >Ky., opposite Cincinnati, were flooded, and also about thirty square miles of •country about tnem were submerged. A recent and reliable writer estimates the -damage wrought by this flood at s6y,- • 000,090, and states that 1,500 business ' bouses ana 3,700 residences were flooded; ■that 1,910 families wore given bedding and 647 families furnished witli coal; that 24,111 people received charity of --some kind, and that 3,991 pairs of boots

Md shees were distributed. The city the Ohio whose loss came next to Ctacinaati is Jeffersonville, Ind, which Matained damages amounting to nearly OfU? million dplk tjje ruin.majority of her busipess , men, and pUctng over five thousand of her people • New.Albany’s> loss is stated at •730,000; Madison, <200,000; Aurora, ‘•150,000; Lawrenceburg, $435,000. The Intervening hamlets-and country lost <300,000, making a totaj of ♦he places just named- In this stretch of river country 24,000 people were rendered homeless and dependent upon

public charity.. The Legislatures of Ohio and Indiana appropriated 8100,000 for the relief of the sufferers,, and a steamer was provided to dispense necessaries to the various towns.

The most tragic scenes of this flood happened at Louisville, where the river embankment broke at midnight and deluged the sleeping city. Most of the people aroused in time to flee to high ground; but about fifty of these 5,000

midnight fugitives were swallowed up by the fierce flood. Those who were too late to wade made their escape in boats, or on rafts, housetops, and floating debris of every kind. Little children were found, in their night clothes, hugging favorite pets or playthings in their tiny arms, while clinging in terror to their

parents or rescuers. There was no group or boat that did not show a scene of touching pathos. But not all the scenes of even that terriblo night were pathetic. There were many incidents which, at least now, seem wonderfully ludicrous. Harper’s Weekly is authority j for the statement that ono old darky 1 woman was found hugging a pet rabbit to her bosom. The old saying that “It never rains but it pours” was never more strikingly and literally verified than when this flood was followed, a year later, by a still greater one. Pittsburg lost three million dollars’ worth of property by this flood, and Portsmouth Marietta, Gallipolis, Pomeroy, Hamer, Lawrenceburg, Cincinnati, and other towns, suffered in proportion. At Portsmouth 12,000 people were driven from their homes to camp upon the hills. A most striking scene at this place was the burning, to the water’s edge, of six buildings. To record the deeds of heroism performed by the men who risked their lives again and again to save helpless men women and children, and to picture the divine fortitude and endurance of mothers in caring for their children and inspiring the hearts of both helpers and helpless with courage and hope, is beyond the, limits of this brief sketch, but would constitute a most thrilling and patoetic chapter in the hisiory of our national disasters. But these floods brought to light the despicable as well as die heroic elements of human nature. The cruel and villainous depredations of the “river pirates,” preying, like vultures, on the helpless and ruined, would put to shame an aueient buccaneer. Many of the most exciting scenes in the floods were the chases after these desperate marauders. When the river police were once sore that they were in the wake of river pirates they did hesitate to fire, with surest aim, the moment they came within range. One of the most serious losses to the country along the line of the Ohio floods is the loss of the “cream” of its rich, fertile soil which is carried to the Mississippi at each overflow. The two great floods of 1883 and ’B4 ! resulted in the practical prostration of j business throughout the States touched by them, k» well as in the general de-

prosslon of manufacture and trade In such States as supplied that territory. The floods of the Mississippi are characterized by the length of and the extent of territory covered by

them rather than by their force and height. They usually begin early in tipspring and continue until the latter part of July. It is a quite general impression that the portion of. the Mississippi subject to Hoods is protected by a uniform and almost impregnable system of dikes or levees. That is far from the actual fact. The “system” of dikes is anything but uniform and anything but impregnable. In fact, the various levees do not constitute a system at all, but a series of separate attempts by the National Government, the several States and private Individuals to keep back the mighty waters in times of ordinary overflow. Comparatively few of these dikes, according to experience and the statements of the best engineering authorities, are adequate protection against extraordinarily high water. During the terrible overflow of 1882— the greatest since the floods of 1864 and 1874—the valley, from the mouth of the Ohio Itiver to Vicksburg, was an immense inland sea, dotted here and there by small points of land, the highest, of course, in the country, on which tho strong cotton “gin” houses were generally located, with a view to serving as places of refuge in times of extreme high water. |ln these “gin” houses would be hud: died together the woa,thy planters, their families, their negro servants and tho poor whites of the community, living in simplicity and fraternity, waiting for the arrival of the steamer that should respond to their beacon-fire and come to relieve their distress. The loss of Jifeaud

property occasioned by such a far reaching overflow of the Mississippi is almost beyond computation,because the sufferers are so isolated from each otliiy, scattered through tho depthis of the great forests that line the valley, that they are out of reach of the rescuing parties and die unknown. It is said that the relief steamers which went up the principal tributaries of the Mississippi during the flood of 1882 would each return

as night to a point of snfetv, with a load of from three hundred to four hundred negroes or poor whites gathered during ♦ho day. The scenes of joy which took p ace at these points of refuge as some j oor woodchopper’s wife found the husband, whom she supposed dead, waiting for her in safety, are as impossible to adequately picture as were the scenes of grief and despair when the last ho*pe of finding wife, husband, parent, or child was finally swept from one and another of the destitute and heartbroken companies of the rescued. What must have been the loss of lifo and property in the awful flood of 1882, when that ol the preceding year left

7,000 In Kansas alone destitute and homeless. From the meager statistics of 1882 I find that the overflow brought 20,000 people of Arkansas into pitiable destitution. Whole communities camped in the rudest fashion The scantiest shelter was welcome, and the families fortunate enough to crowd into idle freight cars were considered uncommonly fortunate. The breaking of the immense levee at Bolivar, Miss., was, perhaps, the most striking single episode in the flood, as the break was the largest that has ever been made in the levee. The spectacle of its “going out” was grand and terrific beyond description. As scarcely a year has passed without one or more disastrous overflows oi the Great Father of Waters, it is obviously impossible to even a.lude to them in this short article. fe’o far as devising a remedy against those terrible, inevitable and frequent disasters, the engineering science of today confesses itself unable to even suggest anything Worthy of confidence within the limits of practicable cost. The best authorities seem to regard tlie building of storage reservoirs along the Upper Ohio, to catch the surplus waters and hold them in reserve until the dry season, when needed to swell the river to navigable depth, as the on y practicable thing. N. S. Shaler estimates that l,ooi* reservoirs, covering a surface of lifty acres, capable of holding an average depth of ten feet of water, would cost §10,000,000. He seems to be of the opinion that that is the least outlay that would be of any practicable service. Fokkjcst Ckissev. Geneva, 111.

NEGRO FAMILIES IN THE CHEAT OHIO FLOOD.

SEEKING SAFETY.

ARRIVAL OF THE RELIEF STEAMER.

BREAKING OF THE LEVEE AT BOLIVAR, MISS.

TO THE RESCUE OF A NEIGHBOR.