Red Cross: 'The Worst Disaster of Record Was at Hand'
Wednesday, January 20, 1937
EVANSVILLE, INDIANA — Today, as light rain fell on the area, the river stage at Evansville in southwestern Indiana climbed to 44.2 feet, 10 feet above flood stage and inching closer to the record of 48.4 feet set during the 1913 flood.
The forecast called for a flood crest of 46 feet at Evansville.
Evansville was located on a horseshoe bend of the Ohio River. The city of 100,000 people was a transportation hub and major furniture manufacturer. An Ohio River bridge completed in 1932 linked Evansville to the small city of Henderson, Kentucky, and beyond via U.S. Route 41.
Nine days earlier Evansville-based forecaster McLin Collom of the U.S. Weather Bureau issued a warning: the Ohio River is on a rampage and will exceed the record 1913 flood that devastated the Ohio Valley.
“Folks read this news at the breakfast table and promptly forgot it,” wrote flood author Delaplane Hornbrook. “They read it in the afternoon papers and after dinner that night and merely shrugged.”
Boats from Chicago
The Coast Guard sent six surf boats from Chicago headquarters. Each was equipped with radios and manned by four Coast Guard personnel.
Two boats went to Hazelton, Indiana, where a levee break sent a 12-foot wall of water into nearby homes and three feet of water flooded the business district. The other four boats were dispatched to Evansville, the scene of numerous evacuations, including at least 500 families on the outskirts of the city.
The Red Cross opened an emergency office in the McCurdy Hotel on First Street in Evansville’s Riverfront District. Three Red Cross directors from national headquarters oversaw relief operations.
Several hundred families had already been forced from their homes in Vanderburgh County, in which Evansville was the county seat. An estimated 20,000 acres was under water. Most of the flood refugees sought shelter with family members and friends. Homes were provided for those on relief.
The Mississippi River was also rising along its middle and lower sections. Two more inches of rain poured into the “The Big Muddy,” one of several nicknames for the Mississippi.
At Kennett in the bootheel of Missouri, the Red Cross was sheltering 2,000 flood refugees. A search to locate more stranded families would resume with the aid of motorboats.
Mobilization of Personnel and Resources
The alarming rise of floodwaters coupled with nearly nonstop rain sparked a response from multiple agencies and organizations.
In addition to the Red Cross, the Coast Guard, Army Corp of Engineers, American Legion and public officials were sending people and resources to Arkansas, the Carolinas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee.
On Tuesday, Works Progress Administration (WPA) chief Harry Hopkins transferred 2,650 WPA personnel to flood work along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Tonight, 13 Red Cross relief workers departed from Washington D.C. to set up headquarters in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Conditions were expected to worsen in the Ohio Valley on Thursday.
In a 1938 book-length report on the disaster, the Red Cross would write the following about the record January rainfall that drenched the region:
The downpour on the 17th initiated an incessant and excessive rain that continued almost without interruption until the 25th, wavering back and forth across the Ohio River. Seldom during this period was the area of the precipitation far enough from the stream not to affect it.
They added, “The worst disaster of record was at hand.”
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