The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado

L >> Logan Marshall >> The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado

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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.

[Illustration: NORTHERN PART OF DAYTON, AND WATER COURSES WHICH
OVERWHELMED THE CITY]

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.

[Illustration: 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]

[Illustration: 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]

SCENES OF HORROR

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.

CHAPTER III

DAYTON'S MENACE OF FIRE AND FAMINE

FIRE BREAKS OUT--HUNDREDS IMPERILED BY FLAMES--THE CITY
THREATENED--70,000 IMPRISONED BY THE WATER--"SEND US
FOOD!"--PATTERSON CONTINUES RESCUE WORK--PHONE OPERATOR BELL A
HERO--EXPERIENCES OF THE SUFFERERS--INSTANCES OF
SELF-SACRIFICE--LOOTERS AT WORK.

Scarcely had the appalling horror of the flood impressed itself on the
stricken people of Dayton before a new danger arose to strike terror to
their hearts--fire that could not be fought because there was no way to
reach it and because the usual means for fire-fighting were paralyzed.

FIRE BREAKS OUT

One fire started from the explosion of an oil tank containing hundreds
of gallons which bumped into a submerged building.

The fire started in a row of buildings on Third Street near Jefferson,
right in the heart of the business section, and not far from the
Algonquin Hotel, the Y. M. C. A., and other large buildings.

The report of the fire was sent out by Wire Chief Green, of the Bell
Telephone Company, who said the fire was then within a block of the
telephone exchange in which was located John A. Bell, who for more than
twenty-four hours had kept the outside world informed as best he could
of the catastrophe in Dayton.

A. J. Seattle, owner of the house in which the fire started after a gas
explosion, was blown into the air and killed instantly.

Mrs. Shunk, a neighbor, was blown out of her home into the flood. After
clinging to a telegraph pole for half an hour, she finally succumbed and
was sucked under the waters.

The explosion blew a stable filled with hay into the middle of the
flooded street and this carried the flames to the opposite side.

The next house to burn was Harry Lindsay's. Then Mary Kreidler's and
then the home of Theodore C. Lindsay and other houses that had been
carried away from their foundations floated into the flames and soon
were on fire.

The floating fires burned without restraint and communicated flames to
many other buildings where families awaited help.

The Beckel House was threatened and Jefferson Street was on fire on its
east side from Third Street as far down as the Western Union office.
Refugees driven from their places where they had sought safety from the
floods were leaping from roof to roof to escape the new terror. The fire
was rapidly approaching the Home Telephone plant.

HUNDREDS IMPERILED BY FLAMES

Another fire which started from an explosion in the Meyers Ice Cream
Company place, near Wyoming Street, spread and burned the block on South
Park, a block from Wyoming.

Flames, starting at Vine and Main Streets, jumped Main Street and the
houses on the other side were soon aflame. In the middle of the street
were a few frame houses that had been washed from their foundations.
These were swirled about for a time, and, as though to aid in the
passing of the section by fire, they were cast into the path of the
flames. Persons hurried from their roof tops, where they had been driven
by the flood, to the roof tops of adjoining houses.

A fire that appeared to threaten the entire business section was
confined to the block bounded by Second and Third Streets and Jefferson
and St. Clair Streets. In the block were the Fourth National Bank,
Lattiman Drug Company, Evans' Wholesale Drug Company and several
commission houses. This fire subsided somewhat by evening.

Fire broke out in the buildings on Broad Street and many who had taken
refuge in the upper floors were threatened with death in the smoke and
flames.

Sixteen persons were housed in the Home Telephone Building with a block
and tackle rigged as a means of egress if the fire pressed them.

GOVERNOR COX AIDS

It was reported to Governor Cox that some had leaped from the buildings
into the flood. The Governor received word via Springfield that 10,000
to 12,000 persons were in the burning buildings, fighting the fire by
water lifted in buckets from the flood.

Governor Cox asked the Associated Press to notify its West Virginia
correspondents to get in touch with natural gas companies supplying
Dayton with gas and ask them to shut off the supply of gas in Dayton, as
the gas was feeding the conflagration there.

Pleading that troops be sent to Dayton to relieve the flood sufferers,
saying that their need was imperative, and that the town was at the
mercy of looters and fires, George B. Smith, president of the chamber of
commerce of Dayton, who escaped from the flooded city, wired Governor
Cox from Arcanum.

Governor Cox, following the information that Dayton was on fire and that
those who had sought refuge in the upper stories of buildings were in
danger, determined at six o'clock to reach Dayton with troops and
assistance.

THE CITY THREATENED

It was impossible to get within two miles of the fire, and from that
distance it appeared that explosions, probably of drugs, made the fire
seem of larger proportions than it was. It appeared to have about burned
itself out, and it was not believed it would spread to other blocks.

It was impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of
persons who might have been marooned in this section and who died after
being trapped by flood and fire.

The flames at night cast a red weird glow over the flood-stricken city
that added to the fears of thousands of refugees and marooned persons,
and led to apprehension that there might have been many of the water's
prisoners in the burned buildings.

Fire started anew at nine o'clock at night and burned fiercely.

The men, women and children marooned in the Beckel Hotel were terror
stricken when fire threatened the building for the second time at night.
Since Tuesday morning two hundred and fifty persons had been in the
place.

Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences in
Dayton, two miles each way from the center of the town, were hundreds of
persons whom it was impossible to approach. Hundreds of fires which it
was impossible to fight were burning. The rescue boats were unable to
get farther from the shore than the throw line would permit. They could
not live in the current.

At midnight residents of Dayton watching the course of the flames from
across the wide stretch of flood waters believed the fire got its new
start in the afternoon in the store of the Patterson Tool and Supply
Company, on Third Street, just east of Jefferson, whence it ate its way
west, apparently aided by escaping gas and exploding chemicals in two
wholesale drug establishments.

Throughout the night fires lighted the sky and illuminated the rushing
waters. Fifty thousand people were jammed in the upper floors of their
homes, with no gas, no drinking water, no light, no heat, no food.

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The flood at Watervliet, New York, showing buildings torn from their
foundations and floating down the stream. Great damage and untold
suffering resulted]

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Rescuer leaving one of the houses in the flooded district and removing a
family to safety]

THE CREST OF THE FLOOD

The crest of the Dayton flood passed about midnight, but the next few
hours allowed no appreciable lowering in the water. Wednesday morning
brought little hope of immediate relief to those who spent the night in
horror, however, and it was feared that the number of drowned had been
greatly increased during the twelve hours of darkness.

Cloudy skies and a cold drizzling rain added to the dismal aspect of the
city in the morning. The temperature fell steadily all night, and when
daylight came the thermometers showed that it was only three degrees
above freezing. The condition was welcomed, because it was expected that
a hard freeze would aid materially in holding back the innumerable
tributaries of the flooded streams and assist the earth in retaining the
moisture that had been soaked into it steadily for the last five days.

By ten-thirty the water depth had lessened about two feet. All stores
and factories in the main part of the town were flooded to a depth of
from eight to ten feet. Numerous residences and smaller buildings
collapsed, but any estimate of the property loss was impossible.

A morgue was established on the west side of the city, and efforts to
recover the bodies and aid the suffering were pushed as rapidly as
conditions permitted. Relief trains began to arrive in the stricken
towns.

Adjutant-General Speaks, with a small detachment of troops and a squad
of linemen and operators, left Columbus early Wednesday in an effort to
reach Dayton. The attempt was made by means of motor boats and
automobiles in the hope to establish adequate telegraph or telephone
communication with Dayton.

MARTIAL LAW ESTABLISHED

A message from Governor Cox ordered the entire Ohio National Guard to
hold itself in readiness to proceed to Dayton as soon as it was possible
to enter the city.

"I understand the importance of having the militia there," he
telegraphed.

Soon afterward notice was posted in headquarters of the emergency
committee announcing that the city was under martial law, and several
companies of soldiers arrived from neighboring Ohio cities.

The soldiers were employed to patrol edges of the burned district, and
prevent looting of homes freed from the floods.

The hundreds of refugees in the Y. M. C. A. building and in the
Algonquin Hotel were facing possible short rations. Their food supplies
were becoming limited and drinking water was at a premium.

Forty boats were requisitioned by the city authorities and were
patroling the city in an effort to save life and property. These craft
were manned by volunteers.

In front of the Central Union Telegraph office the water was still
running so swiftly that horses could not go through it without swimming.
One boat went by with two men in it, rowing desperately, trying to keep
the bow to the waves. The boat overturned, but both men escaped drowning
by swimming to a lamp post. They clung to the post for half an hour
before a rope could be thrown to them. After repeated casts the line
fell near enough to them to be caught, and the men were drawn into the
second story window of the building.

The telephone employees in the building fished chairs, dry goods boxes
and a quantity of other floating property from the flood. The debris
swept down the main business street with such force that every plate
glass window was smashed.

Only one sizable building had collapsed up to noon so far as the
watchers in the telephone office could learn. This structure, an old
one, was a three-story affair, near Ludlow Street, occupied by a harness
manufacturing concern.

70,000 IMPRISONED BY THE WATER

More than 70,000 persons either were unable to reach their homes or,
held in their waterlocked houses, were unable to reach land.

While those marooned in the offices and hotels were in no immediate
danger of drowning there was no way food or drinking water could reach
them until the flood receded. Those in the residences, however, were in
constant danger both by flood and fire. First the frailer buildings were
swept into the stream, many showing the faces of women and children
peering from the windows. These were followed by more substantial brick
buildings, until it became evident that no house in the flood zone was
safe.

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