'Christ and Calamity'

Why the deaths of 1,000+ people and wholesale destruction of parts of 15 states—beginning Easter Sunday 1913? Pastors grappled for meaning

UPCOMING TALK: “‘Deity and Disaster’: From the Great Easter 1913 Flood to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria,” to be given Sunday, March 11, 2018 at 9:45 AM, will explore this subject further. Please come! (No reservations needed, no admission charge; DETAILS HERE)

Easter Sunday was supposed to be Christians’ highest religious festival: celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His promise to mankind of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. And in 1913, Easter, March 23

Editorial cartoon “Lilies and Crepe” appeared on the front page of the March 25, 1913 St. Joseph Gazette (Missouri) just two days following fateful Easter Sunday 1913. The cartoon is heavy with symbolism. Crepe (used for the bow) may indicate the Victorian custom of veiling mirrors to prevent the spirit of the deceased from being trapped in the reflection. Lilies symbolized many things, chiefly the Resurrection of Christ celebrated as Easter—the day the tornadoes killed hundreds (the skeletal hand of death is writing in the Bible) and the torrential rains began, bringing the record flood.

was greeted with the front pages of Sunday newspapers across the land proclaiming the good news, and churches adorned with lilies opening their doors and inviting all to join in singing hymns of praise.

But hours later, just as families were sitting down to Easter dinner, a dozen tornadoes struck one after another. Within four hours, 250 people had been slaughtered by violent twisters roaring across Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Indiana (see “‘My Conception of Hell’,” “To Build a Tornado,” and “Terror in Terre Haute”). That same evening, torrential rains began to fall relentlessly across the Midwest, especially intense over Indiana and Ohio (see “Be Very Afraid”). Within days, Noachian floods swelled without warning and swept away houses and businesses. By the time the waters were receding at the week’s end, at least 1,000 people were dead, and the angry waters were continuing their destruction down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers (see “‘Death Rode Ruthless’” and “Like a War Zone”).

Editorial cartoon “Thy Will Be Done,” published
on the front page of the Omaha Daily Bee on
Sunday, March 30, 1913, depicts a grief-stricken
congregation struggling to understand the Easter tragedy.
(Distracting horizontal lines are scratches on the
microfilm newspaper record.)

Over that first week, grief-stricken ministers and congregations alike wrestled with finding meaning in apparently senseless forces that killed a thousand, injured tens of thousands, and rendered homeless hundreds of thousands more. So in 1913, the Sunday after Easter (sometimes called “low Sunday” because attendance often was lowest then after the build-up of Lent through Easter), sanctuaries were filled with bewildered parishioners seeking comfort—and comprehension of how, why such devastating calamities could befall a world governed by a good, merciful, and loving God.

Many newspapers—not just in the Midwest or Great Plains, but all the way to California—published on Monday, March 31, 1913 summarized sermons given by pastors the day before. The accuracy of the summary depended, of course, on the skill and understanding of the reporter. But details aside, the summaries give an idea of the range of lessons ministers drew.

Interpreting disaster

A few ministers in 1913 alluded to the notion that God sent the devastating tornadoes and floods to chastise or punish humans—an interpretation that would have been nearly standard fare 150 or 200 years earlier and apparently still had some currency in the popular mind. At least one minister might have ventured close: “Without disaster the world forgets God,” warned the Rev. Johnstone Myers to the congregation of the Immanuel Baptist Church in Chicago.

Piersel. Illinois
State Journal,
3/31/1913 p 2

Rev. Alba C. Piersel of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Springfield, Illinois, reinforced that message. In a sermon titled “Deity and Disaster, or Christ and Calamity” (the inspiration for the title of this post), Piersel declared: “Man is prone to overestimate…himself.  …Striding the streams with cities and towns, establishing squatter sovereignty on their banks, denuding the plains of forests, making dams to stand the strain—all of this brings disaster in its train” because in overestimating himself, man underestimates God. 

“God is still supreme,” Piersel reminded his listeners, and “God speaks from His pulpit in the great disaster or calamity,” reminding humanity “in flame, or flood, or tornado—‘Be still and know that I am God’.” The lesson, he asserted, is “[n]ever to be presumptive toward God.” “Suffering and sorrow are for punishment, or for perfecting” although, he hastened to add, “It is not to be presumed that those who suffer so in our recent widespread disasters are wicked.”

Other pastors disagreed. “God never hurt anybody in the whole history of the world just to show that he is great,” objected the Rev. Frederick E. Hopkins, Park Manor Congregational Church in Chicago. “The doctrine that God hated Nebraska, Ohio, and Indiana with such hatred that he could find no way to satisfy it except by such a calamity would make more infidels…in one week…since man began to believe…”

Hayes, Hopkins,
and Myers.
Chicago Tribune
3/31/1913 p 3

The Rev. F. L. Hayes of the California Avenue Congregational Church in Chicago ventured to place some blame: “It was not God who brought the destruction of the floods but the carelessness of men. The lack of the proper building of bridges, the insufficiency of protection in the making of reservoirs, the indifferent inspection are the responsible causes. The law of the flood must be met by the law of the high ground. …It is the love of God that gives us the fire and the water to be our servants, but as masters they become tyrants.”

“The Ohio flood was not sent by Providence as a punishment,” declared the Rev. R. J. MacAlpine from the pulpit of Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Cleveland. Instead, “[t]he Creator seems to permit his works in nature to take their complex course, without respect of persons or circumstances. We should, therefore, learn the ominous lesson that, so far as is humanly possible, we must…impregnably defend ourselves against [nature’s] most sudden violence,” such as locating cities well back from lowlands or erecting other protections “by all the power of human genius.”

MacAlpine.
Cleveland
Plain Dealer
3/31/1913 p 14

“Many say the tornado is the wrath of God upon his people. I cannot see it that way,” stated the Rev. Nathaniel McGriffin at the Lowe Avenue Presbyterian Church in devastated Omaha, Nebraska. “God…permits the forces of nature to be in motion.” But he drew the line at putting faith in the works of man as an adequate defense. “The tornado shows us the futility of man’s power, ingenuity and invention. Man builds mighty works, but nature’s slightest demonstration may overwhelm them.”

In McGriffin’s view, “No more important lesson is taught in this terrible crisis than that…Man in the flesh is crushed, but his spirit is inconquerable. See it rise out of the ruins and set about the task of rehabilitation. …But let us get the full force of this lesson and recognize that this inconquerable spirit…has come down from above, the spirit of God, eternal and unchangeable, which vanquisheth not and is not bowed down. It comes to still the tempest and repair the wreck.”

McGriffin. Omaha Bee 3/31/1913, p. 10

Speaking to a congregation of 1,000 at the First Methodist Church in Omaha, some of whom were dressed in mourning black crepe, the Rev. M. B. Williams urged that “God can do wonders with those who will but trust in Him.” His sermon, “A Voice in the Storm,” was based on Mark 4:39–40, from the account of the disciples in a boat with Jesus on the Sea of Galilee being terrified when a storm blew up with high winds and surging waves. “And He [Jesus] arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, ‘Peace, be still.’ And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. And He said unto them, ‘Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?’”

Williams.
Omaha Bee 3/31/1913, p. 10

Meantime in Omaha, the Omaha World-Herald reported a tragic drama among the rubble left marking the path of the tornado: “From out of a brick pile that once had been a building, but was torn away on one side and boarded up like a rough shed, came the sound of a pipe organ and anthems of praise, devotion and thanksgiving.” That was the congregation inside what remained of Trinity Methodist Church. From nearby piles of debris came the “rat-tat-tat” of the carpenter’s hammer and the rasping noise of the saw.

Yes, thanksgiving. For despite the death and destruction, so many were thankful that they and their loved ones were still alive. Despite the fact that the parish of St. Cecilia’s Church suffered the heaviest losses than any  other Catholic congregation in the city of Omaha—15 houses demolished and another 50 seriously damaged—Father Daniel Harrington offered a mass of “thanksgiving that so many were spared from the destruction of the tornado.”

St. Cecilia’s. Omaha Bee 3/31/1913, p. 10

Amen.

©2018 Trudy E. Bell

Next time: Desperate Medicine

Bell, Trudy E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control, including several pictures of Cox. (Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus $4.00 shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me), or order from the publisher.

The last five years

In 2012, this research blog was launched for the 2013 centennial of the Great Easter 1913 flood, to feature original findings and insights by meteorologists, historians, and others about the nation’s most widespread natural disaster—and why it is important today. What has it revealed?

First things first: THANK YOU, loyal readers, for your following, your queries, and your thoughtful email comments since this research blog was launched on November 17, 2012. It is now a significant reference with 60 posts, many quite substantial, and has garnered nearly 150,000 views. Please keep your feedback coming: you can always reach me at t.e.bell@ieee.org. 

Evidence is growing that we are heading into an era of more frequent intense rainfall events. What if a 1913-scale storm system and flood recurred in the same geographical regions today? Since 1913 remains the flood of record in many places across the Midwest, it could reveal how extreme consequences could be. Credit: Dayton Metro Library

In addition, THANK YOU to all the historians, meteorologists, engineers, and other experts who have graciously contributed guest installments on their own work relevant to aspects or implications of this monumental calamity and effects on the nation. I invite other scholars to contact me with research they would like to highlight in future posts.

Since November 2012, this research blog has attracted
nearly 150,000 page views (as of October 31, 2017);
peak months have been the centennial month March
2013 with  4,819 views, later exceeded by January 2016
with 5,002, December 2016 with 11,117 (the all-time
maximum so far), and May 2017 with 8,127.

On this fifth anniversary, for both new and longtime readers (and for myself!), it seems right to pause and collate some of the main findings about the Great Easter 1913 natural disaster succinctly in one convenient location—as well as evidence for why this century-old storm is highly relevant today not just to history, but also to science, engineering, and infrastructure planning. 

Links below take you to the relevant post(s): many observations and conclusions come from new analyses of primary documents or calculations by new meteorological or computational tools, and so may amplify, supersede, or contradict received wisdom in older references.

Map of the modern Omaha metro area with the
approximate tracks of what were called the Yutan, Omaha,
and Council Bluffs tornadoes. From west to east, all
three F4 tornadoes—some of the most violent that
occur—struck within 20 miles and 45 minutes.
Credit: Evan Kuchera

Scale of disaster

The United States had no warning. The nation’s arguably most widespread natural catastrophe struck Easter weekend 1913 as the grand finale of what Mabel T. Boardman (volunteer head of the Red Cross who succeeded its founder Clara Barton) called “an epidemic of disasters.” It began on Good Friday with a dozen tornadoes in Alabama and four other states (see “The First Punch”). It culminated with a violent twister that roared through downtown Omaha on Easter Sunday, March 23 that still ranks as Nebraska's deadliest tornado (see “‘My Conception of Hell’” and “To Build a Tornado”). That same evening, equally violent tornadoes leveled parts of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and destroyed part of Terre Haute, Indiana (see “Terror in Terre Haute”).

Over the following week, record flooding submerged vast areas in parts of 15 states, immobilizing the industrial heart of the nation. Some of the meteorology was just plain weird. Hours before the powerful tornadoes devastated Omaha and Council Bluffs, the same monumental weather system swept an enormous dust storm across Oklahoma and Kansas, igniting major prairie fires—and baffling thousands in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri with rains of red mud (see “Great Easter 1913 Dust Storm,Prairie Fires—and Red Rains”). 

Extent of the country covered by 1913 tornadoes, electrified
dust storm (the worst experienced until the Dust Bowl years
of the 1930s), and rainfall of March 23-27, plotted to
scale. Subsequent flood crests roaring down the
Mississippi River burst levees and devastated vast
sections of Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Assembled by Trudy E. Bell from data from multiple sources.

Indeed, the calamity was part of a whole year of meteorological extremes of total weather whiplash (see “1913’s Wild Weather”). The epidemic of disasters was punctuated with an unusual Midwest earthquake (see “Earth-Shaking Mystery”) and precipitated a catastrophic mine explosion (see “Explosion at Equality”).

The human toll

At least 1,000 people died (see “‘Death Rode Ruthless’”), more than perished in the 1871 Chicago fire. Property was devastated over an area greater than that afflicted by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (to which it was compared at the time). The destruction to infrastructure exceeded that of Hurricane Katrina (see “‘Like a War Zone’”), in places resembling the ferocity Hurricane Maria visited on Puerto Rico in September 2017. And it was a rolling disaster, as over the following weeks, flood crests surged down the Mississippi, bursting levees.

Heroes famous…

Its most prominent national hero was a crook: John H. Patterson, founder of National Cash Register (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio; although technically a felon, his actions transformed him into a national hero (see “The Villain Who Stole the Flood”). Another major figure was Ohio’s Governor James M. Cox, “boy publisher” of the Dayton Daily News, who used the blockbuster story of Dayton’s flooding to save Ohio (see “The Governor’s Ear”). Whether by accident or design, the two men effectively co-opted the nation’s 1913 Great Easter Flood and made it specifically the Great Dayton Flood. 

There was also newly inaugurated President Woodrow Wilson, who sent the Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison into battle against the raging waters. There was the Red Cross, encamped across Ohio until the following August, five months later. There was engineer Arthur E. Morgan, whose resulting innovative flood control project— then the largest engineering project in the world—has protected southwest Ohio and the city of Dayton ever since (see “Morgan’s Cowboys” and “Morgan’s Pyramids”). 

…and unsung…

But there were also hundreds of less-recognized heroes and heroines, such as the handful of police in West Indianapolis who rescued more than 600 people (see “Men of the Hour”). Simultaneously,  the city of Cleveland, crippled and without power itself, was first responder in rushing the first aid to Dayton and Zanesville, while the city’s major newspaper The Plain Dealer became a lifeline for distributing essential information across inundated northern Ohio (see “‘Clevelanders Responding Nobly’”).

Credit: Cleveland Leader, March 28, 1913, p. 2

Hundreds of miles southwest, nearly a thousand prisoners in an Indiana state penitentiary were charged by their beloved warden to save the town of Jeffersonville from being engulfed by the Ohio River; the residents were so grateful that they feted the inmates with a bountiful feast (see “The Prisoners’ Feast”). Legions of telephone operators stuck to their switchboards despite personal peril (see “Heroism of the ‘Hello Girls’”). 

There were members of Rotary, a business service organization less than a decade old, whose spontaneous assistance to the victims of the 1913 tornadoes in Omaha, Nebraska, and the flood districts led them to discover their true mission of humanitarian service (see “Service Above Life”). And fast (if unorthodox and desperate) work of public health officials during the record flooding along the Hudson River at Albany, New York, ended up convincing the nation of the value of chlorinating drinking water to prevent typhoid fever and other waterborne disease (see “Rescuing Albany’s Water”).

Desperate to escape flames raging behind them from a gas
explosion, survivors in Dayton brave rain and sleet to
make their way along telephone and telegraph wires
to safety above angry torrents of floodwaters surging
through the streets below. Note the middle figure is a
woman in her long skirts crawling on hands and
knees. Credit: Miami Conservancy District

Even young teenagers were heroes. In northern Indiana, 60 high-school-aged cadets rescued more than 1,400 people—transforming both the city and their school (see “36 Hours: From Boys to Leaders”). And all around the flooded Midwest, there was raw personal courage of desperate men and women escaping flames by edging their way across icy telephone wires swaying above raging floodwaters—some even carrying babies (see “High-Wire Horror”).

… and villains

On the dark side, across the tornado-devastated and flooded regions, sufferers who had lost everything wrestled to be recognized as victims worthy of compassion and assistance, rather than turned away branded with the stigma of being undeserving paupers (see “Spurning Disaster Aid”).

The national scale of the natural disaster was recognized in
1913, and prompted the publication of what we would
now call “instant books,” five of which are shown here.
Our National Calamity of Fire, Flood and Tornado by
Logan Marshall (bottom left book in photo) inspired
the title of this research blog. Credit: Trudy E. Bell

And mean-spirited profiteers sought to make a quick buck on the backs of the suffering by plagiarizing newspaper stories to produce instant books (see “Profiting from Pain”) and hawking various products (see “Advertising Disaster” and “Grisly Souvenirs”).

Coping with loss

Some loss was as heart-rending as it was unusual, such as the elephants, big cats, and 500 other animals that drowned in Peru, Indiana (see “Tragedy at the Circus”).However, it was therapeutic to people in 1913 to demonstrate publicly how they were roaring back bigger and stronger than ever; to that end, not two years after the Great Easter 1913 flood, Dayton declared its comeback with an exhibit about the flood in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco—another city also celebrating a comeback after the 1906 earthquake (see “Exhibiting Disaster”)

Recognizing that sometimes words are inadequate to express grief and other deep emotions, in 1913 artists depicted national mourning and other truths in powerful editorial cartoons (see “Eloquence Beyond Words”). The 1913 flood inspired one of James Thurber’s most famous short stories (see “The Day the Dam Broke?”). Today, the 1913 flood is among the Midwestern memories memorialized by talented artists in miles of murals on flood walls along the Ohio River (see “Magnum Opus”).

Why does the 1913 disaster matter today?

When NOAA senior hydrologist Sarah Jamison plugged March 1913 measurements into 2012 computational climate models to reconstruct just what kind of mammoth weather system caused the Great Easter 1913 Flood,

Observed evidence over the past century indicates intense
rainfall events over the Ohio Valley and Midwest are
increasing both in frequency and intensity. Because the
Easter 1913 storm system brought the flood of record to
Indiana, Ohio, and elsewhere, data from it can begin to
set a benchmark for the question “how bad could
‘extreme’ become?” Credit: NOAA and Trudy E. Bell
(slide from a June 2017 invited presentation to the
Indiana Water Resources Association

she made a chilling discovery: Such a weather pattern could readily recur (see “Be Very Afraid…”). Indeed, climate models call for intensifying rainfall and runoff in the eastern half of the country, and the 1913 storm system brought tornadoes and flooding still holding the record set in many places in the interior of the nation.

Indeed, massive multistate flooding during the past five years actually approaches the magnitude of the multistate Great Easter 1913 Flood in some ways (see “Prayers and Lessons” and “Misery in Missouri” and “Texas Torrents”). Message: Extreme, widespread, non-hurricane rain events in the middle of the nation can happen again. Are we ready?

Dayton, for one, seeks to be prepared by bringing 1913 high-water measurements into today’s GIS computational tools (see “Mapping Disaster”). One significant difference: in 1913, one reason the death rate was so high was that people had no warning. Today, however, weather satellites and computer models, plus warning systems and weather safety awareness days help the public prepare (see “Days of Warning”).

Credit: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, FEMA

On the other hand, should a 1913-scale storm system recur in the same geography, today not only much larger population but also internet servers, dams, nuclear power plants, and toxic waste dumps would all lie in harm’s way—all with the potential of magnifying the disaster (see “Benchmarking ‘Extreme’”). Moreover, engineering assessments reveal that thousands of dams across the nation today are poorly maintained, threatening populations downstream (see “Brink of Disaster?”)—and too many dam owners are still practicing magical thinking and denial instead of preventing disaster (see “An Unnecessary Tragedy: The Johnstown Flood”). Yet, perversely, humans are steadily increasing their exposure to natural hazards (see “Floods and Other Disasters:Knowing More, Yet Losing More”)

New (in 1913) technologies played a heroic role. The need for emergency radio sprang to the nation’s attention when high school and college ham radio operators in Ohio and Michigan relayed urgent communications when the telephone and telegraph wires were downed (see “Wireless to the Rescue”). And 1913 may have been the first natural monumental natural disaster filmed and photographed while the catastrophe was still unfolding—and the images shown and publicized, in part to fundraise donations (see “Screening Disaster”)

Natural disaster can happen again and could disable
21st-century communications.

However, old technology also can save the day. When electric power, transportation, and communications infrastructure is devastated for days or weeks, orchestrating evacuations, aid, relief, and recovery can’t rely on electricity, internet, and electronics (see “Crisis Communications in a Communications Crisis”). Moral: Use every tool available.

Parting thoughts

How does something so monumental as the 1913 natural disaster get forgotten? Seeking answers to that profound question remains a goal of this research blog.

Please feel free to contact me for permission to reprint stories, or to invite me to write an article or paper (or a book: my ultimate goal is to write the definitive book on the full scope of the Great Easter 1913 natural disaster), or to give a public presentation.

©2017 Trudy E. Bell

Next time: Desperate Medicine

Selected references

All previous installments list references consulted for that individual analysis. In addition, some three dozen books and half a dozen documentary films developed over the past five years are summarized in “Great Easter 1913 Disaster Library”.

Bell, Trudy E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control, including several pictures of Cox. (Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus $4.00 shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me), or order from the publisher.

All my published articles on the 1913 flood are referenced on my 1913 web page; most can be downloaded as PDFs. Links also go to a number of interviews and documentary films.