Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever

by Geoff Williams

  3 P.M., Dayton, Ohio

  The residence of Aunt Fannie and Uncle Ottie Fries, where the Adamses were hiding out, now had a few inches of water making its home on the first floor of their house on Warder Street. The road itself, which was always a bit of a trench, being four feet deeper than the front yards, was now a swiftly moving river itself, six or seven feet deep and getting deeper by the moment.

  Fannie and Ottie’s furnace was long submerged, and of course the gas and water supplies were shut off. As the Adamses had discussed for the last few hours, it was going to be a cold night, with no food, and they had two babies to consider. The last thing they wanted their children to catch was pneumonia or to be thirsty and hungry. So they shouted until they were able to hail a rescuer in a boat, which thankfully were plentiful in this part of the city. The rescuer’s first name was Carl. His last name was the unfortunately prophetic Sinks.

  Charles told Carl Sinks they wanted to go to what was now known as the Geyer Street landing, or to a rescue center that had been set up at Forest and Grand Avenues, all around two or three blocks away. That proximity between their house and the rescue center may have given Charles and Viola a false sense of security.

  The babies were both wrapped in shawls, and the grownups were in heavy overcoats. They climbed into the boat, rocking in the current. Once they were all in, Carl Sinks pushed the boat away from the porch railing, and like a roller coaster lurching forward, the current caught its coaster, whipping it forward—and into the tree in the front yard.

  The boat flipped over. Everyone fell into the water.

  In her heavy overcoat, Viola screamed “Hon, I’m drowning,” as the waves ripped her baby son from her arms. Grandpa Adams lunged for Christopher, Jr., scooping up the baby, as Charles, holding on to Lois, reached for Viola.

  In doing so, Charles somehow—he was never sure how it happened—loosened his grip on Lois, who was sucked into the current. The girl, just a month shy of her first birthday, disappeared into the rapids. He would never forgive himself for that.

  But there was no time to even think about what had just happened. In nine-foot-deep freezing and muddy water, Charles was fighting to save his wife’s life; Grandpa John Adams, holding on to his grandson as tightly as possible, was trying to gain footing on a terrace or porch that he felt beneath him, but couldn’t and found himself swept down the current; Carl Sinks, too, was swept away.

  In the background—not that Charles, Viola, Grandpa Adams, and the others could hear over the river—frantic neighbors screamed, unable to do anything, although across the street from the Fries’ home, a neighbor, Dr. Charles Whitney, remembered an old pistol that he had in the house. He searched his house, found it, and fired his revolver into the air, a known signal of distress. His hope was that someone would come with a boat or a rope. Harold Miller, a rescuer in a boat too far away to do anything useful, began shouting as well. Bill Chryst, a neighbor and an engineer, came running when his wife shouted for him, and right away he knew he had to try to do something.

  Viola and Charles managed to each get an arm across the upturned boat and swam with it to a small tree sapling about a hundred feet away, where Grandpa Adams and Carl Sinks had landed. They were each hanging on to a branch, desperately trying not to be carried off.

  They let go of the boat, which had sunk but lodged itself into the tree, and with his right hand, Charles hung on to a tree branch and with his left tried to steady Viola. Their long, soaked overcoats, weighing them down, made survival even harder, but somehow they kept glued to the slight tree. As much as he could, Charles braced himself with one foot in the underside of the boat, but his raincoat kept getting in the way of his feet.

  Once they seemed to be able to stay put for the moment, Viola asked the question she must have been terrified to ask but had to: “Where are the babies?”

  “I have one,” said Grandpa Adams.

  “Which one is it?” Viola asked.

  Grandpa Adams wasn’t sure—they were twins, after all, and they were being rained on and struggling to hang on to a tree—but he turned the baby’s face to their parents. Charles, Jr. Both parents forced themselves to look downstream. Just below them, in the branches of another tree near their own, was a white shawl, dangling in the water. There was no Lois inside it.

  Just then, Charles, Viola, Grandpa Adams, and Carl Sinks could see Bill Chryst wading toward them. It became too deep, however, and everyone realized he was risking his life as he started swimming toward them. Chryst wasn’t much of a swimmer, but he reached the tree. It was probably about then that it occurred to him that he had no rope, no boat, and no way of getting any of these tree-bound people back to shore, but he was nonetheless a big help. Chryst’s energy hadn’t been sapped by the cold water—yet—and he was able to help the others stay tethered to the tree.

  It seemed like hours that they hung there. The shouting didn’t stop. There were more gunshots. The roar of the river was unceasing. It kept raining. But eventually Charles saw a man rowing a boat, a man he recognized, John Ryan, a fellow member of the Knights of Pythias, a club that they both were members of and an organization that had been around since 1864. Charles shouted like he never had before, and was certain, as the boat was rowing away, that Ryan hadn’t heard him.

  But Ryan had. He was trying to figure out a way to reach them in the formidable current. Once he arrived, Bill Chryst and Charles Adams helped Viola into the boat. She then asked for the baby, and Grandpa Adams carefully handed over her son.

  Viola gratefully accepted the baby, and then, from Charles’s point of view, she suddenly disappeared. Bewildered, Charles realized when Viola had reached for Charles, Jr., she had tipped the boat slightly, and waves flooded it, knocking it over. John Ryan lunged for one of the tree branches, but Viola and her baby son weren’t as fortunate. They had been swept away. Just like that. One moment they were near death and then almost saved, and now they were gone again.

  Charles would later remember the memory only vaguely, like looking at a faded negative of a film. “I can just dimly see them sinking into that seething river,” he would write.

  Charles held on to the tree, but only out of instinct. He was aghast and empty. His father could see it.

  “Hold on, my boy, don’t let go,” Grandpa Adams kept shouting.

  Charles kept trying to think of reasons why not to let go. His wife and babies were gone. He had been supposed to watch over them, and he had failed. And there was no boat to save him. Why hang on?

  He probably would have let go, but almost immediately another boat arrived. Two firemen, Jack Korn and Warren Marquardt, had heard a gunshot, brought their boat to the tree, and pulled in Charles and Grandpa Adams. The other men—Bill Chryst, Carl Sinks, and John Ryan—would be safely rescued soon after.

  Once Charles rolled into the boat, he lay on the floor, shivering and teeth chattering and barely able to move, except for his shaking. The conversation—in the rain and wind and with the backdrop of the roar of the river—must have been a jumble of shouts and confusion. Following instinct more than anything else, Charles told Korn and Marquardt to take him back to the house of Reverend Fries, where he had started this journey of death. They obliged, somehow steering the boat through the current toward the house. While Charles lay in a heap, wanting to die, Korn and Marquardt interrupted his thoughts and informed him that his wife and son had been rescued.

  Viola Adams couldn’t shed her overcoat, which may have been what kept her alive. It was suggested later that the coat, spread out over the water, kept her buoyant. Still, as she fought the deadly current, she kept going under and swallowing water. But somehow, a man named Dudley Artz, manning a boat and rowing against the current on Warder Street, spotted her and came to her rescue just as Viola was going under the water for a third time.

  If someone was going to be drowning and seconds mattered, you couldn’t pick a better person to scoop you up. Artz was a charter member of the nearby Stillwater Canoe Club, and neighb
ors watching reported that he somehow rolled Viola, waterlogged overcoat and all, into his boat without any significant water going into the craft.

  Once ashore, a Dr. D.E. Miller took immediate charge of Viola, but after it was clear she didn’t have any water in her lungs, Dudley Artz and Miller had trouble finding anyone to take the young mother into a house, where she could get warmth and rest. Artz’s brother ended up accepting her.

  Charles, Jr., meanwhile, had been separated from his mother and, like a ragdoll being carried by the current, washed down Warder Street and onto Geyer Street, and that should have been that for the little baby, but he had a guardian angel in another rescuer in a boat, an Elbert Riley who had two women in the back of his boat. Riley was fighting for his and his passenger’s lives, trying to steer clear of a whirlpool that was creating an island of lumber and debris. Just as he was clearing it, someone from some apartments—the Folsom Apartments—shouted: “Get that baby out of the water!”

  That voice, which would never be identified, saved Christopher, Jr. Riley looked down into the water and for a second, he could see an object under the surface, sinking and heading into the whirlpool. Taking an oar out of its socket, while trying to avoid being sucked into an eddy, was an incredibly brave and risky move, but Riley decided to chance it. He stretched his oar right where he thought the baby might be. When he raised the oar, he discovered it had caught the baby, scooping him up, flat on his stomach.

  Riley pulled the baby and oar into the boat and quickly dumped the wet, dying infant into the laps of the women, who screamed.

  Riley shouted at them to hold the baby in their laps, so that the baby was face down, allowing any water to possibly spill out of his mouth and lungs. Then he threw the oar back into its socket and rowed as hard as he could, trying to keep them all from crashing into the whirlpool and its pile of debris.

  When they reached dry land, Elbert Riley and his passengers must have been stricken. The infant he had fished out of the water wasn’t breathing. But Dr. Miller was nearby and feverishly began trying to get the water out of the lungs of Charles Otterbein Adams, Jr. For what seemed the longest time, Miller kept at it, while a miserable crowd watched. Then suddenly the baby offered a little cry, and for the doctor and crowd, it was the happiest sound imaginable.

  Stunned to hear that Viola and Charles, Jr. were alive, Charles pushed himself up, enough that he could look over the side of the boat. About a block away, he could see a woman in a boat, wearing a black coat, whom he assumed was Viola. What shape she was in, he didn’t know. He didn’t see Charles, Jr., but he took the men’s word for it that his son had been rescued. The idea of asking the men to take him to his wife and son apparently didn’t occur to Charles, or, more likely, everyone recognized that they just couldn’t, given the current and Charles’s current condition. He was in no shape to do anything.

  Grandpa Adams was just as wet and cold as Charles but probably drew strength from seeing his son exhausted and then euphoric again and knowing that Viola and Charles, Jr., were nearby and alive. Grandpa Adams told Korn and Marquardt to take him on to the landing on Geyer Street. He would find them.

  At Uncle Ottie and Aunt Fannie’s house, it became a group effort and family activity to get Charles warmed up. Uncle Ottie gave Charles a rubdown with liniment. He also put some liniment in some water and gave it to Charles to drink. It would never be advised today to drink liniment, a liquid often used to help muscle fatigue, but back in the day, ads for products like Sloan’s Liniment would suggest: “For growing youngsters, give 10 drops of Sloan’s Liniment to ten youngsters in half a pint of moist mash twice a week only. Put five drops of Sloan’s Liniment in every quart of drinking water.”

  The ingredients in Sloan’s Liniment included turpentine.

  It didn’t seem to hurt Charles, however, who remarked that what he really needed was a shot of whiskey. The family then got Charles, who was shaking violently, into a bed between woolen blankets.

  It didn’t work, he soon realized. He couldn’t sleep. His mind was likely too littered, wondering where Viola and Charles were and thinking about poor Lois. His legs were also in pain and still freezing.

  Charles climbed to his feet and tried to walk, hoping to improve his circulation. But his pacing did little good. He soon decided to climb back into bed.

  March 25, 4 P.M., Delaware, Ohio

  There was one bit of good news that papers were able to report to their readers. Mayor Bertrand V. Leas of Delaware, Ohio was seen marooned on the second floor of a building surrounded by water. He wasn’t dead, as had been believed. Rescuers were doing what they could to reach him. He had, at this point, been sitting on the roof of this building for the last fourteen hours.

  March 25, 4 P.M., Indianapolis

  The water had risen enough that streetcar service and water service had ended, and, because there was no water, the city would have to do without fire protection as well. Fire Chief Charles E. Coots eventually would resort to bringing a cistern, which is often used to catch rainwater, and, with a machine called a pumping engine, his men could pump water from the cistern through a hose. It was a crude way of fighting fires, but it was better than nothing.

  But all in all, Indianapolis was holding its own. It had stopped raining earlier in the day, and while the rivers, particularly the White River, were rising, the streets weren’t yet flooded.

  The electric and gas were still on, although many people worried that if there was, say, a gas explosion, that lack of a functioning fire department might be a problem. If there was good news for anyone in the city of Indianapolis, which had an estimated six square miles of its downtown underwater, it may have been for the hotel owners. By nightfall, due to an influx of residents driven from their homes, the hotels were now full. Their existing guests, the ones who had come before the flood and who weren’t going anywhere, tended to book for another night as well.

  One hotel guest who wasn’t happy to be spending the night was Ben Hecht, the cub reporter from the Chicago Journal. He had arrived in Indianapolis only to be told that the trains weren’t going anywhere remotely close to Dayton, which was about 115 miles to the east. So Hecht found himself holed up at the Claypool Hotel, sitting in the barroom with a crowd of other reporters. Train service was expected to resume the next day. For the moment, the reporters drank, and Hecht listened to tales of adventure from other, older journalists.

  He was frustrated to be trapped in a hotel, but he enjoyed the stories. Hecht admired his fellow journalists deeply and idealized his chosen profession. As he wrote years later, “No other profession, even that of arms, produces as fine a version of the selfless hero as journalism does.… A good newspaperman, of my day, was to be known by the fact that he was ashamed of being anything else. He scorned offers of double wages in other fields. He sneered at all the honors life held other than the one to which he aspired, which was a simple one. He dreamed of dying in harness, a casual figure full of anonymous power; and free. For the newspaperman, the most harried of employees, more bedeviled by duties than a country doctor, more blindly subservient to his editor than a Marine private to his captain, considered himself, somewhat loonily, to have no boss, to be without superiors and a creature always on his own.”

  Hecht, listening to his fellow journalists, came to a decision that he kept to himself. He was going to Dayton, train or no train.

  Approximately 4 P.M., Tiffin, Ohio

  Jacob Knecht, a fifty-year-old sausage maker who worked at the Beckley Meat Market, was trapped on his house with his two sons, Clarence, a 25-year-old with a promising future at the U.S. Glass Company, and Wilson, fifteen years old. Jacob’s son-in-law, George Schwab, twenty-two and just four days shy of his twenty-third birthday, was also on the roof.

  For many people, the roof could be a sanctuary; but as people in Tiffin were finding out, many houses only had a matter of time before they were washed into oblivion.

  Rescuers had determined that they couldn’t do anything for Knech
t and the young men. The icy water, they calculated, was moving at sixty miles an hour.

  The force was too much. People from dry land and from their own homes watched in horror as the Knecht house cracked from its foundation. The entire house exploded into splinters, wood, debris, and memories. Only the roof remained as anything recognizable: it had turned into something of a raft. All four men began screaming for help that their neighbors couldn’t give.

  They didn’t have much chance to ponder the surreal turn of events or to try and enjoy the ride. Up ahead, they could see their fate.

  They were headed right for the Huss Street Bridge.

  It was dismal luck. Later, the bridge would wash out, and if it had washed out earlier, maybe things would have ended differently for at least some of the men. But because it was there, all four men realized that they didn’t have much of a chance if they smashed into it.

  So about twenty feet before that alternate fate, the men jumped off. Nobody ever saw Clarence, Wilson, and George alive again.

  Jacob Knecht, on the other hand, emerged on the other side of the bridge alive and embraced the top of a willow tree and remained there.

  Just outside the United American Mechanics’ National Orphans’ Home, the man in charge of it, a Mr. Simpson, tried to swim to Knecht, but the water was either too cold or too evil-looking to spend any real time in it. He quickly returned to the riverbank.

  Adolph Unger, a West Point cadet, tied a rope around his waist and charged into the freezing water. He attempted to swim, but either his line was too short or the water too wild. He couldn’t make it closer than 150 feet and returned to land, a chilly, wet mess.

  Men gathered along the shore, throwing out every idea they could come up with to reach Jacob, but fifteen minutes after grabbing the willow tree, freezing and weak, the sausage maker knew he was about to succumb to the inevitable.

  “Thanks, good-bye, boys, I’m—” and then the water forced its way into Knecht’s mouth, obscuring his last words. He was swept into the river.