Although crippled and without
power itself during the Great Easter 1913 Flood, Cleveland rushed aid to Dayton
and Zanesville. And with telegraph and telephone wires downed, the Plain Dealer became the principal information lifeline across flooded northern Ohio.
[On Saturday morning, April 23, 2016,
terrific fortune led to my being picked to go up on stage and play the second quiz
during Michael Feldman’s fun live radio show Whad’Ya Know? So when
Feldman asked about my current work in front of a Cleveland Playhouse Square
audience of ~2,500 plus broadcast listeners across the nation, I talked about my research on the 1913 flood and how
Cleveland was the state’s first responder in the emergency (listen beginning at
1:33:24 here). To anyone who
heard that show and is thus looking here, welcome! Here is Cleveland’s
story! –T.E.B.]
In late March 1913, Cleveland was a
vibrant, proud, burly, bustling boom town: largest in Ohio and sixth largest in
the country, with a 1910 census central city population of
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Credit: Cleveland Leader, March 28, 1913, p. 2
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560,663
(75 percent larger than it is today and fast on its way up to a 1930s peak of
over 900,000). The city was home to some of the nation’s major industrial
revolutionaries and benefactors including John D. Rockefeller (possibly the
richest man in the world, with a net worth then equivalent to four times that
of Bill Gates) and Warner & Swasey (world famous since the 1880s for not
only their turret lathes and other heavy equipment but also for their
innovative designing and mounting of the two then-largest telescopes in the
world at the Lick [1888] and Yerkes [1893] observatories). Cleveland boasted art, culture, and philanthropy equal to those of Chicago
or New York City.
Four brawling newspapers vied for
readers’ attention: the morning Cleveland
Leader, then still the largest but being contested by the fast-rising
morning Plain Dealer, the two being
run by former Plain Dealer partners now
turned competitors: Charles Kennedy at the Leader
and Elbert H. Baker at the Plain Dealer—which
Baker was fast turning into one of the best newspapers in the land; plus there
were the evening News and the Press. Cleveland was also home to a
large contingent of Ohio’s National Guard.
Then, with no warning, disaster struck.
Cleveland’s
worst flood
On Easter Sunday March 23, 1913,
torrential downpours began pounding Ohio, dropping literally three months of
normal rainfall in less than a week right over the east-west range of hills
that crosses the northern quarter of the state just south of Akron. Bubbling up out of that range of hills
are the sources for all five of Ohio's
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The
most intense rainfall in Ohio—over 11 inches in four days—fell over the east-west continental divide in the northern third of the
state. Also, between Easter Sunday, March 23 and Thursday morning March 27,
Cuyahoga County (location of Cleveland on the shore of Lake Erie) itself
received more than 7 inches of rain. Credit: Alfred J. Henry, The Floods of 1913 (U.S. Weather Bureau Bulletin Z, 1913)
|
major river systems plus Indiana’s
Wabash. Moreover, that range of hills is a continental divide. Such
concentrated rainfall at that position caused every major river in Ohio to
overflow from source to mouth with the speed of flash floods. On Tuesday and
Wednesday, March 25 and 26, literal walls of
water—some up to 20 feet high—funneled down onto Sandusky, Tiffin, and other
northern Ohio cities as well as onto Dayton, Columbus, Chillicothe, and cities
to the south.
 |
These headlines in
the March 27 Cleveland Leader say it all
(page number on the microfilm was unreadable)
|
Megatons
of water rushing through city streets scoured channels as deep as eight feet
under the foundations of brick office buildings, sweeping away entire houses,
trains, and bridges, and inundating
riverside power plants and factories.
Powerful floodwaters twisted railroad track, scraping topsoil from farm fields
and leaving worthless river rocks in its stead (see “Like a War Zone”).
All around the state, the terrible waters drowned at least 600 Ohioans,
injured thousands more, and drove hundreds of thousands into attics or into
trees, clinging
to branches and shivering with terror and near-freezing temperatures for days—a
perch so precarious they dare not sleep for fear of falling into the raging
current just feet below (see “‘Death Rode Ruthless…’”). Above the water line in downtown Dayton and other cities, inaccessible as if
surrounded by a giant moat, lurid flames from enormous fires billowed black
smoke, consuming landmarks and lives.
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The
Cuyahoga Lumber Co. in the Flats in Cleveland was owned by Archibald C. Klumph,
president of the Cleveland Rotary Club, and on Wednesday, March 26, the swollen
Cuyahoga River swept much of its wood out to Lake Erie. See “Service Above Life”
for how the 1913 flood gave Rotary it humanitarian mission—in part through
Klumph. Credit: Cleveland Public Library
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In Cleveland
itself, more than 3 inches fell in just 20 hours on the Monday and Tuesday
after Easter, followed by another 4 inches before week’s end. On Tuesday,
March 25, the city suffered its worst-ever flood in the Cuyahoga River valley
and in the Flats—the local name for the river’s flood plain near its
mouth. In 1913, the Flats were filled with lumber yards and steel
mills (today the Flats are home to trendy bars and restaurants and stores—hello, folks,
it’s not called flood plain for nothing…!).
The rapidly rising Cuyahoga flooded
railroad tracks and toppled boxcars filled with coal and foodstuffs, so quickly
that some workers trying to save the cargo were stranded atop the cars. The
rising river spread into the factories and quenched blast furnaces in the steel
mills, and swept expensive lumber from lumber yards out into
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| Official
map of the flooded Flats and other regions of Cleveland along the Cuyahoga
River in 1913. Credit: Report of the Special Committee of the Council
Appointed to Investigate and Report on the Improvement of the Lower Cuyahoga
River, July 1913 |
Lake Erie.The thundering 20-mph current yanked
tugs, barges, and steamships loose from their moorings and swirled them
downriver like chaff. The stern of the 366-foot-long steamship William Henry Mack wedged under the lower
West Third Street Bridge. The swollen river’s powerful turbulent floodwaters kept
pitching the stuck freighter like a relentless lever arm for four and a
half hours, until the freighter literally pried the iron drawbridge off its concrete piers and threw
it into the raging Cuyahoga.
Altogether property damage in Cleveland was
estimated to be in at least $3.5 million dollars (1913 dollars, equivalent to
hundreds of millions of dollars today). Electricity was lost city-wide when the
power plant was flooded, stopping elevators and darkening lights. Still, aside
from flooded basements, Cleveland’s downtown office area—on bluffs well above
the Flats and Lake Erie—escaped major destruction. The city was also fortunate
in that it still had two telegraph lines operating into and out of the
metropolitan area.
 |
The
10-year-old Mack,
owned by the Jenkins Steamship Co. in
Cleveland, had a load of corn aboard at the time. The freighter’s hull was
repaired and continued service, but was sold the next year to a Canadian
company, which changed its name to the Valcartier. It was finally scrapped in 1937. More history appears here.
Credit: Library of Congress
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‘Burden
on Cleveland’
Until rail transportation was at least partially
reestablished across the Midwest in early April, allowing Federal troops to
penetrate into the state's worst flood zones in southern Ohio and contributions of aid to be received from elsewhere around the country,
Ohio was physically isolated. Moreover, other major Midwest cities were
preoccupied with their own share in the widespread natural disaster and
suddenly needy populations: Omaha
and Terre Haute
had been half-leveled by tornadoes, and Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Louisville were as paralyzed by flood as Dayton.
On Wednesday, March 26, newly
inaugurated President Woodrow Wilson issued a nationwide appeal for goods and
money, widely published in newspapers across the country:
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President Wilson’s
appeal to the nation is the first that calls the natural disaster a “national
calamity,” words later adapted for the title of an instant book published weeks later, and also for the
title of this research blog
|
Taking up Wilson’s plea, that same day the
Plain Dealer urged its readers: “The
floods that have now afflicted so many towns and cities in Ohio are ... matters
of general concern. ... A disaster at Columbus or Dayton is Cleveland’s
concern.” Similarly, a Cleveland Leader editorial
observed three days later: “Here is the richest and most populous city in Ohio.
It has escaped with relatively insignificant losses… These facts throw much of
the burden of relief on Cleveland.”
Indeed, Cleveland was uniquely
positioned to be first responder. Just three months earlier, on January 7, the
city’s Chamber of Commerce—2,200 members strong—had made national headlines for
founding the Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy. In that Industrial
Revolution era of fascination with efficiency and productivity, time and motion
studies, organized social work, and “scientific” charity, the city had just
concluded a five-year study of its benevolent associations. The Federation was an
innovative experiment for simultaneously increasing the number of donors
(principally by setting up methods of appealing to smaller donors), increasing
the efficiency of good works (principally by eliminating duplication), and
protecting donors from con-men. By instituting a streamlined structure, the new
Federation hoped to do the greatest possible good with every gift, and organize
Cleveland into becoming “The City of Good Will.”
With local fanfare, the Federation had
begun weekly meetings in early March, just a few weeks before the flood. This—the
first modern Community Chest—was co-led by Martin A. Marks, a leader in Jewish benevolences, and Homer H.
Johnson, the president of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce (incidentally, also
the father of Philip Johnson—7 years old in 1913—who would grow up to be an influential
American architect).
 |
| Description of the innovative Cleveland Federation--the first modern Community Chest. Credit: The New York Times, April 6, 1913 |
The 1913 flood became the first trial-by-water
of Cleveland Community Chest’s machinery for federated fundraising and aid. Immediately after Wilson’s appeal, a citywide relief fund was
established. Daily progress in fundraising reported in all the newspapers
kept excitement high. Within
36 hours, more than $31,000—equivalent to close to $700,000 today—flowed into
the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and was rushed to Dayton. By the end of March,
Cleveland had raised some $100,000—equivalent to just under $2.5 million today
(or, more accurately, in 2014 dollars, based on the consumer price index). “Clevelanders are responding nobly” Johnson declared
on April 1.
In parallel, Clevelanders ranging from
wealthy industrialists to churches to fraternal and women’s groups mobilized
mammoth rescue efforts to send necessities to Dayton, Columbus, Zanesville and
other flood-devastated southern Ohio cities. Adults and school-children alike
gathered blankets, food, clothing, water, medicines, boats, and even “auto
trucks” to rush down to flood-devastated Dayton and Columbus by train, horse,
and boat.
National Guard to the rescue
Meantime,
late Tuesday night March 25, Ohio Governor James M. Cox issued an order
directing Brig. Gen. John C. Speaks to call out the entire Ohio National Guard to
report to their nearest armory on Wednesday morning—a statewide total of some
6,500 strong young men. Included in that call were all four of the
Cleveland-based companies of the Fifth Regiment, under the command of Col.
Charles X. Zimmerman (often misspelled with one m), plus the Cleveland-based
Fifth Infantry, Troop A cavalry, the naval reserves with their life-saving
equipment and various boats, Engineers’ battalion, and auxiliary organizations.
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| Credit: Plain Dealer, March 27, 1913, p. 8 |
Within
24 hours, troops were boarding the first relief train leaving Cleveland Wednesday morning to try to
ford through treacherous veritable inland seas to reach Dayton and other
flood-stricken regions. Zimmerman and his troops were put in charge of securing
some of Dayton’s hardest-hit flood districts; by week’s end Zimmerman was also
put in complete charge of securing even worse-hit Hamilton. In succeeding weeks, the
Cleveland Engineers were crucial in the early reconstruction of both
Dayton and Hamilton.
Lifeline—and scoop
During that terrible first week after Easter when
telephone and telegraph communications were down
across the Midwest, newspapers became the primary means of mass communication.
All the Cleveland
newspapers prominently ran official notices, such as warnings from the Ohio
Board of Health urging citizens to boil all drinking water to prevent the
spread of typhoid fever and other diseases, as well as progress reports of
Federal and local rescue efforts and appeals for money and relief supplies. But flooding or loss of electricity had also shut down many newspaper
publishers in flood-swept towns and cities around Ohio.
On Tuesday, March 25, the Plain Dealer announced it would seek
missing Cleveland or Ohio people who were in Omaha or Terre Haute when the
Easter tornadoes struck. The next day, as soon as the mammoth scale and severity of the 1913 flood was becoming evident, the paper set up bureau to collect frantic
inquiries from Clevelanders anxious about flood-stranded relatives in some 50
cities around Ohio, including deluged Zanesville and Findlay, using its single
fitfully working private telegraph connection.
 |
| Cleveland newspapers competed in sending reporters into the flood zones. Cleveland
Leader, March 20, p.1 |
Augmenting its already existing
statewide network of correspondents, however, the Plain Dealer embedded three strong, ambitious reporters with the first relief train Wednesday morning carrying the first troops from the National
Guard, “in
the hope that once there, they will be able to relieve the fears of thousands
of Clevelanders” about the safety of relatives and loved ones in Dayton, Miami,
and elsewhere. The flood-beleaguered train finally
reached Dayton around 5 PM Thursday evening—the same day as five competing reporters
from the morning Leader and evening News arrived (each having taken a
different train route) along with a photographer.
Armed with lists of names, re reporters’
overt mission was the humanitarian one of determining the safety and
whereabouts of friends and relatives of Cleveland residents, which information the Plain Dealer published in column after
column of tiny type. Block by block in Dayton, Columbus, and Hamilton and 45 other
hard-hit cities, the Cleveland reporters as well as local correspondents canvassed
what was left of neighborhoods, sleuthing frantic queries about some 2,500 families
and individuals from 1,500 Cleveland-based friends and relatives.
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| The Cleveland Plain Dealer March 28, p. 7 |
But in tracking down Clevelanders’ loved
ones, the reporters took unique photographs and collected first-hand accounts
of tragedies and thrilling escapes. Their derring-do pursuing of news had the
reporters piloting rowboats and riding “breeches buoys” on cables strung across
raging rivers right into the heart of flood zones that exhausted refugees were
fleeing, or—after the floodwaters had somewhat receded—skidding motorcycles through
the muddy streets of Dayton to inquire after Cleveland relatives in every
block. The Leader and Plain Dealer journalists, some of the
most enterprising and physically courageous in the land, competed with each
other in efforts to reunite flood victims with their Cleveland relatives even
as they were filing “we were there” stories from the muck.
Moreover, the Plain Dealer stood out for its enterprising distribution of newspapers. As soon as printed papers, ink still damp, ran off the presses, they
were wheeled into the mail room, wrapped in waterproof bundles, and rushed into
waiting special hired trains that steamed to the edge of the floodwaters. There,
the bundles of papers were transferred into motorboats and rowboats, which
newsboys paddled up to the second-floor windows of homes to sell issues to
marooned flood victims. To frightened families feeling profoundly alone as they
huddled in the sodden attics of homes that kept shuddering from impacts of
downed trees carried in the muddy torrent raging only inches away on the other
side of a wooden wall, reaching through a window to take a damp newspaper from
the wet hands of a courageous newsboy must have felt as welcome as seeing a
glimmering light in terrifying darkness.
 |
The Cleveland Plain
Dealer April 1, p. 1
|
By sheer ingenuity and perseverance, the
Plain Dealer both discovered and
spread breaking news about the statewide flood—including exclusives from within
the flood zone—as far west as Toledo,
as far east as Ashtabula, and as far south as Columbus. Indeed, for the worst
of flood week, the Plain Dealer crowed
that it “was the only newspaper in the country to invade scores of cities and
towns in the flooded sections.”
The extraordinary measures were kept up
for more than a week, until waters receded and wireline communications were
somewhat repaired. On April 4, the Plain
Dealer announced: “With means of
private communication re-established between Cleveland and the Ohio cities that
were flooded, the Plain Dealer inquiry bureau goes out of existence”—although reporters stayed somewhat longer in Dayton and Columbus, whose communications infrastructure was still badly devastated.
 |
Map of the Plain Dealer's reach across northern Ohio as an information lifeline during the worst of the 1913 flood. Cleveland Plain
Dealer March 27, p. 6
|
National
consequences of Cleveland’s heroism
“Cleveland has
just passed through the worst flood in her history,” declared an editorial in
the Plain Dealer on April 2. What
were some of the 1913 flood’s long-lasting results for Cleveland and the
nation?
 |
| People atop boxcars watching after the William Henry Mack had destroyed the lower West Third Street Bridge in Cleveland. Credit: Cleveland Public Library |
Homer
H. Johnson, the president of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and co-leader of
the Community Chest, was appointed by Governor Cox as one of the five
commissioners of the Flood Relief Commission charged with overseeing the
rebuilding of Ohio. The speed and efficiency of the Cleveland Community Chest
in both raising funds and directing aid dramatically demonstrated the potential
power of what came to be called “federated” fundraising and giving. The Community Chest, subsequently replicated
in many cities around the nation, ultimately became one predecessor of today’s United Way.
The
yeoman efforts of the Ohio National Guard in securing Dayton, Hamilton, and
many other Ohio cities under martial law and organizing their relief,
sanitation, and reconstruction actually saved its very existence. Before the
flood, there was strong agitation within the Ohio State legislature to slash
appropriations for the Guard and do away completely with certain arms of it.
The 1913 flood resoundingly demonstrated the value of having trained troops who
could stand up at a moment’s notice in a major emergency.
The
extraordinary efforts of the Plain Dealer
in its humanitarian efforts, its sending reporters into harm’s way to get
news from almost impenetrable corners of the worst flood zones, and shouldering
the task of being the principal information lifeline across thousands of square
miles of flood-devastated Ohio helped establish it as a major national paper.
 |
| Men salvaging lumber from Edgewater Park after it was swept down the Cuyahoga River into Lake Erie. Credit: Cleveland Public Library
|
In 1917, Arch C. Klumph—president of The Cuyahoga
Lumber Co. in Cleveland, whose lumber was swept down the Cuyahoga River and into
Lake Erie by the 1913 flood, and also president of the Cleveland Rotary Club in
1913—proposed setting up an endowment “for the purpose of doing good in the
world.” In 1928, the endowment was renamed the Rotary
Foundation, today sponsoring international programs for humanitarian
purposes.
©2016
Trudy E. Bell
Next time: Crisis Communications in a
Communications Crisis
Selected references
There are many
ways to convert the value of historical sums of money. Officer, Lawrence H. and
Samuel H. Williamson, “Measuring Worth is a Complicated Question;” for the actual
calculator, see “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar
Amount, 1774 to Present.”See also their discussion “Choosing the Best Indicator
to Measure Relative Worth,” using the cost of constructing the Empire State
Building as an example for an infrastructure project.
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.
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 t.e.bell@ieee.org, or order from the publisher.
