War and High Water

The fir and oak-bearded hills were heavy with wet and the rain and sleet gathered great churning white heads and came roaring down. Swollen rivers rose first in the Pittsburgh industrial regions, then in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama.

Also in high water were the Ouachita, Arkansas, upper Susquehanna, Chenango Rivers. Mules and field hands hiked quickly for higher ground. The cottonwood trees felt silt on their upper branches. The waters came in and rose to angry lifts. Their major attack was on the U.S. war industries.

The worst December flood ever in Pennsylvania, a State famous for its flood records and the Johnstown horror of 1889, came mouthing the floating remains of chicken houses, sheds, fence rails and even sections of the fields. The flood drove workers from their lowland mills and homes. A dozen war plants stopped their lathes, cooled furnaces before the river could walk in and explode against them.

Worst hit was the Pittsburgh steel, coal, big-muscles area. The Ohio reached 36 ft., climbing at the rate of two licking inches every wet hour. The Allegheny lipped over and poured cold, dirty water onto the highways and down mine shafts--where sneezing pumps fought for a while and then gave up trying to keep the pits dry. The coal cars stood empty under a pewter sky . . . miles of them on the rights of way as coal mines sent their men home to salvage drenched belongings. Altogether 50,000 people felt the flood in their homes.

War production was battered and hurt. But it was not crippled; the time and losses would be made up. One good result of the flood was a testing of the Civilian Defense forces. From Pittsburgh to Portsmouth along the Ohio, calls brought out 100,000 people, many of whom stayed on duty 36 hours. Food centers, patrol activities, traffic routing all went smoothly in their hands. Private armies of autos and trucks reacted a thousand miniature versions of the taxicab Battle of the Marne, going wherever they were most needed. Against nature civilian defense had proved it could and would serve. Against flood and high water the war effort did go on.

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