Library's review
That flood, however, is not what this book is about. Instead, Welky examines the Thousand-Year Flood of 1937, so-called because the likelihood of such a catastrophic event was thought to be one in one thousand, or .1 percent. In many ways, it was just as destructive and expensive as the 1927 flood, but for some reason has received much less attention. As the book’s subtitle (The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937) indicates, this flood occurred primarily in the Ohio River Valley, from Pittsburgh, Pa., to where the Ohio meets the Mississippi at Cairo, Ill. Large cities, like Cincinnati and Louisville, were swamped under feet of water. So were small towns like Paducah, Ky., and Shawneetown, Ill. Each of these municipalities dealt with the flood’s immediate effects and aftershocks in different ways with widely differing results. Cincinnati and Louisville emerged stronger than ever; Louisville in particular experienced a real revitalization of business and cultural development. In contrast, Shawneetown floundered without strong leadership and ended up a sadly reduced and divided community. Cairo, which managed to avoid being inundated by floodwater thanks to the deliberate destruction of a levee across the river in Missouri that allowed floodwater to displace hundreds of sharecroppers, nevertheless failed to seize the opportunity to remake itself and instead continued on its path toward oblivion and irrelevancy. And of course, outside of the cities lived hundreds of thousands of poor farmers and sharecroppers who lost everything and had to live in refugee camps and tent cities. One of the saddest images in the book is the fact for many of the poorest folks, the meager rations of gruel, beans, and sowbelly actually represented an improvement in the food they could afford to eat at home.
Welky first lays the foundation by recounting how the Ohio River Valley was settled, and how the decisions made while the area was still considered frontier had a direct bearing on what happened more than a century later. He effectively mixes personal stories drawn from contemporary accounts and records with an examination of the official response to the disaster, at the local, state, and federal levels. On the one hand, swift and effective relief work was performed by an unprecedented public-private partnership of the Red Cross and the Works Progress Administration. Once the immediate situation was in hand, President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal administration tried to use it to consolidate the notion of federal management of floodplains, waterways, and disaster response, but with limited success. And of course, the entry of the United States into the second world war in 1941 also distracted attention from the need for a comprehensive conservation and environmental plan that would manage both land and water effectively. It’s in this section of the book, after the floodwaters have receded and the political infighting begins, that some readers may find the book start to drag. But it’s worth persevering to the end, as Welky revisits each of the cities and towns he focused on in the beginning to see how the flood’s effects were being felt throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st.
This is not the smoothest “narrative nonfiction” I’ve ever read but it’s quite accessible to lay readers. And the ebook version I read (from the consistently high-quality University of Chicago Press) has functioning endnote links that make flipping back and forth quite easy. The ebook also includes a full index, with the page listings also hyperlinked back the text. All in all, it’s a very well-done edition.
Highly recommended for those interested in natural disasters and their effects on the people and governments who survive them.
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In the early days of 1937, the Ohio River, swollen by heavy winter rains, began rising. And rising. And rising. By the time the waters crested, the Ohio and Mississippi had climbed to record heights. Nearly four hundred people had died, while a million more had run from their homes. The deluge caused more than half a billion dollars of damage at a time when the Great Depression still battered the nation. Timed to coincide with the flood's seventy-fifth anniversary, The Thousand-Year Flood is the first comprehensive history of one of the most destructive disasters in American history. David Welky first shows how decades of settlement put Ohio valley farms and towns at risk and how politicians and planners repeatedly ignored the dangers. Then he tells the gripping story of the river's inexorable rise: residents fled to refugee camps and higher ground, towns imposed martial law, prisoners rioted, Red Cross nurses endured terrifying conditions, and FDR dispatched thousands of relief workers. In a landscape fraught with dangers--from unmoored gas tanks that became floating bombs to powerful currents of filthy floodwaters that swept away whole towns--people hastily raised sandbag barricades, piled into overloaded rowboats, and marveled at water that stretched as far as the eye could see. In the flood's aftermath, Welky explains, New Deal reformers, utopian dreamers, and hard-pressed locals restructured not only the flood-stricken valleys, but also the nation's relationship with its waterways, changes that continue to affect life along the rivers to this day. A striking narrative of danger and adventure--and the mix of heroism and generosity, greed and pettiness that always accompany disaster--The Thousand-Year Flood breathes new life into a fascinating yet little-remembered American story.… (more)