Floods

For two weeks, over many miles of the U.S., there had been almost ceaseless rain. (In Chicago, 16 days out of May's first 19 dripped.) The monstrously gorged rivers--the Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Wabash, Osage, White, many others--roared like millraces, rose until they overspread their banks and engulfed the land. From Illinois and Indiana south to Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, hundreds of thousands of acres seeded with the food the world is waiting for lay under water. Swirling chaos enveloped many a valley town and city. In Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas, tornadoes added to the havoc.

Everywhere civilian-defense organizations had prepared for disaster in the form of enemy air raids. Now they met the flood emergency quickly and efficiently. The death toll was small: at week's end only twelve fatalities had been reported by the American Red Cross. But if deaths were few, discomfort was everywhere, and destruction so widespread that the Berlin radio reported the news in high glee.

Flooded Farms. The floods meant delayed planting this year, probably smaller harvests. Farmers who already had corn seed in faced the necessity for replanting: seed had either washed away or been rotted by too much moisture. In cities and towns, many a Victory gardener found his garden ruined. The American Red Cross estimated that more than 1,350,000 acres of land were inundated.

Flooded Factories. High water on highways and railroads meant delay in production of many war materials, delay in shipping goods already produced. Logansport, Ind. has five plants with war contracts; all had to be shut down. Four war plants in the St. Louis area, including Atlas Powder Co.'s great TNT plant, were closed either because incoming raw materials did not arrive or because water entered the buildings. In Arkansas the Big Inch broke, reducing the East's oil supplies even more (see p. 18). At Dupo, Ill., near St. Louis, one of the nation's largest freight yards (8,000 cars move there daily) was under water. Production was halted at a huge caterpillar tractor works in Peoria, Ill.

Flooded Families. Refugees huddled in emergency stations set up by the Red Cross or other relief organizations all over the Midwest. Some 30,000 families (100,000 people) were homeless at week's end, the Red Cross estimated; 9,663 houses had been destroyed or damaged. The entire population of Dupo--2,073--had to be evacuated by Coast Guardsmen. Women, children and aged were taken from Beardstown, Ill.

The rampaging Missouri River leaped cross-country to join the Mississippi six miles below St. Charles, Mo. The confluence of the two rivers is usually 28 miles below St. Charles. In the triangle thus created, 1,000 people were stranded.

In many areas U.S. soldiers, summoned from training stations, labored for sleepless days & nights to rescue those marooned by flood. Other soldiers (7,000 in the Little Rock, Ark. area alone) toted sandbags in efforts, mostly futile, to strengthen levees. The presence of Axis war prisoners in Missouri was disclosed officially for the first time when gangs of men with great white initials "P.W." stenciled on the backs of their jackets and on their trouser legs, turned up to work on a levee near St. Genevieve.

Flood Features. Soldiers, using new, fast amphibious jeeps which look like big water bugs, made many rescues.

> Sam Hider, employed at the Oklahoma Ordnance Works at Pryor, Okla., drove away from his home near Salina, Okla., 15 miles away, at 7:15 a.m. He expected to be on the job at 8 a.m. He arrived 24 hours later. Cut off by the raging Grand River, he detoured 297 miles through Arkansas and Missouri to reach his job. Another ordnance worker started for his job on a horse, switched to an auto, then to a boat, finally arrived by shuttle-bus.

> The Missouri-Kansas-Texas ("Katy") Railroad's crack Texas Special left St. Louis Monday night, reached San Antonio four days later. It had wandered through four states to find a dry-land route.

> Farmers in Indiana spent their days fishing for carp carried into their flooded fields from the swollen Kankakee River. Near Springfield, Ill., farmers sat on their porches, caught fish.

> When floodwaters swept livestock from farms near Muskogee, Okla., Muskogee residents stood on bridges, lifted live, squealing pigs from the water.

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