| PERSPECTIVE |
(April 5, 2002) - Nebraska never had a disaster like it. And 50 years later no other emergency has matched the Missouri River flood of 1952. Other floods claimed more lives, but the devastation brought by the swollen Missouri that year was staggering. Even after all these years an amazing effort to save Omaha from the flood still astonishes those who watched it unfold. “Statewide” correspondent Bill Kelly reminds us that this month marks the 50th anniversary. By the middle of April 1952, the Missouri River was twice as deep as it is this weekend. |
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Transcript of Missouri River Flood: A Look Back
[Bill Kelly] The Missouri River has been so peaceful recently it seems impossible that the waters could spread fifteen miles across…that the depth could double in a matter of hours...that tens of thousands of people could be forced to flee the uncontrolled river. That was 1952.
It started with snow. Hundreds of miles to the north and west, where the Missouri River begins the snows were deep and melted quickly.
On April 7, the word went out to emergency officials all along the state's river boundary: get ready for the worst. The Nebraska National Guard mobilized units up and down the river. For the first time, young Dave Hamer was called away from his home in Wayne and into active duty.
[Dave Hamer] We went out that same night. Colder than all get out to South Sioux and we were put on security patrol. Were billeted on the second floor of one of the very few two story buildings in South Sioux. Within a day or two the water was within about a block of that building. Everything else in South Sioux was under water.
[Bill Kelly] At the same time, Omaha got the warning from the Army Corps of Engineers river management office in Mississippi. Mayor Glenn Cunningham faced the challenge of a lifetime.
[Glenn Cunningham] So it gave us a chance to get busy and do something about it and that's what started it all.
[Bill Kelly] What did that feel like when you get that news?
[Cunningham] It felt like I didn't have a damn thing to do about it. It was over my head.
[Bill Kelly] South Sioux City took the first hit, and it was devastating. Even today, a look at any road map shows why.
[Hamer] The water, at the highest point, would almost cut across like this. All the way down past the airport. The river as it rose it just cut off form one end of the ox to the other end and it was all under water.
[Bill Kelly] Town officials ordered the immediate evacuation of all 55 hundred residents. The Missouri's swell crushed dikes protecting South Sioux and Dakota City. Eight feet of water poured across the city, claiming one third of its homes and businesses.
[Hamer] We were at one point patrolling with boats rather than trucks because we were afraid that the trucks would get mired down or we would get stranded someplace so we commandeered local fishing boats, outboard motors, oars, all that sort of thing.
[Bill Kelly] Across the river in Sioux City Iowa, water surrounded the meatpacking plants and filled the stockyards. Downstream, spring planting had been only days away. With only fragile farm levees in the way, the Missouri spilled across hundreds of thousands of acres of crop land. The levees crumbled.
[Hamer] There was a rumor going around that some of the farmers were going to blow up one of the dikes to let the backwater that was already standing on their property flow out back to the river. But the fact of the matter was if the dike had been breached, the water would have gone the other way.
[Bill Kelly] There were places where the Missouri River now spread out 15 miles wide…and all of that water was heading south to Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa.
[Governor Val Peterson, 1952] The situation here is extremely serious. As a matter of fact, this is the worst flood in the history of the white man in this area.
[Bill Kelly] Volunteers were already lining up, as the city's disaster plan took shape. Ironically, it was a fear of another world war, and a fight with the Russians that had Omaha ready. The Mayor turned to the city's Civil Defense team for leadership in this battle.
[Cunningham] Well then it was just a couple of years later that we get the bad news from Mississippi and the Corps of Engineers. And you know the rest. [WEK] You had a disaster plan in place then. [GC] That's right. That's why we won it.
[Bill Kelly] What they did was put a plan into action with military organization and precision. In a matter of hours, a rush of volunteers began topping levees on both sides of the river with another 3 to 5 feet of sandbags and flash boards. The work crews stretched along nearly 15 miles of shoreline. This was Omaha's industrial backbone, and just a couple blocks away was all of downtown. Sandbags lined the business district in Council Bluffs.
[WOW-TV Reporter Ray Clark] And now from up on top of the dike at the north end on the council Bluffs side...
[Bill Kelly] WOW-TV reporter Ray Clark broadcast on top of the dike.
[Ray Clark] This is the critical spot. [Flood Volunteer Jack Piersoll] Well that's what I understand, it's more critical than any other spot in town. [Clark] Some seepage. You think its going to hold? [Jack] I'm pretty sure it's going to hold. In 1552, in April, this was all underwater.
[Bill Kelly] Paul Johnston is spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers Northwest Division.
[Paul Johnston, Army Corps of Engineers] Oh, what they did was really heroic. You think that the levee system was there and then they put all that flashboard up in a very short time and you hold the river back. I've talked to people who were there on the levee and they said it was like walking on Jello it was so super saturated.
[Irene Stuben, Omaha] They were worried, they were tired, and they looked it. And everyone was worried I think that the dikes would break. And I had a double worry because my kids were down there.
[Bill Kelly] Talk to anyone who lived in Omaha in 1952 and they remember the flood.
Jack Kelly remembers when the river would push its way under the dikes in unexpected places.
[Jack Kelly, Omaha] Well every once and a while it would break out and start going up like a gusher out of the sewer and they'd build sand bags up round them until they got up high enough that they were above the plain of the water. And if you didn't tap those off then in a couple of hours it would be big enough to swallow a house.
[Bill Kelly] Joe Bezousek remembers pulling 24 hour a day duty in the Union Pacific offices, while rail crews shored up the yards on both sides of the river.
[Joe Bezousek, Omaha] There was a lot at stake and I think if it had gone a couple feet higher it would have been a disaster on our side too.
[Bill Kelly] Shirley Tanner remembers the knock on her door that started the evacuation of her Carter Lake neighborhood...she and 40 thousands others on Omaha's eastern edge.
[Shirley Tanner, Carter Lake, IA.] They said we had to get out. We packed everything up and stored it in our friend's basement and a friend of the family offered us a room for a week and after a week we moved back in.
[Bill Kelly] And everyone remembers seeing all the water.
[Robert Brown, Omaha] I cried. Because I saw all these people with their houses inundated and that was a terrible, terrible sight.
[Bill Kelly] Robert Brown also has the vivid memory of his father, the pastor and radio personality R.R. Brown.
[Brown] He felt a great need to help the people in the flood area, so he went on the dike, on the levee and he prayed and newspaper and television stations from all over the country got him on and it was a great thing for Omaha.
[Hamer] There were an estimated 35 thousand people, volunteers, down here on the riverfront throwing sandbags, driving earth moving equipment doing all the things that it took to sustain an army, if you will.
[Cunningham] That was the talk of the town in a way. Among the workers anyway and the people of Omaha who knew what that meant to have people come in from several states around here.
[Bill Kelly] Mayor Cunningham opened city hall as a rest stop for the volunteers. They even brought in singers to entertain them between tours of duty.
[Bill Kelly] Do you have any idea why all these people decided they needed to help? [Cunningham] Well, it's like the people today. They have a feeling of "we've got to help."
There's an old saying that if you grew up in Carter Lake you belonged to Carter Lake and a lot of the guys who moved away came back and filled the sand bags.
On the night of April 17 the Missouri River crested at 30.25 feet…the highest level in its history, and a record never broken.
[Cunningham] And the Corps of Engineers were there, and made it official, yes you have passed the danger point so I had my wife come up to city and then we went on home. But we didn't get home, because I got in my car about five miles out it came on the radio we've had eruption of the dike.
[Bill Kelly] It was the worst possible news. Water crashed through a sewer line and erupted into an industrial area. The Army Corps of Engineers rushed in and created a temporary steel and rock dam to block the escaping river water. There were no more surprises. The waters had been kept out of Omaha, and most of Council Bluffs.
While the two cities celebrated beating the river, thousands of other families to the north and south faced a massive clean up.
And as the water went down, the debates began.
[Governor Peterson] As a matter of fact, this flood is relatively inexcusable.
[Bill Kelly] A federal plan for a massive Missouri River flood control system collected dust for eight years before the disaster of '52. President Harry Truman saw the damage to Nebraska, Iowa and his home state of Missouri...and he got mad.
[President Harry Truman] I want this driven home. I want to get this job done. There isn't any sense with our fooling around any longer. And they didn't fool around any longer. The Garrison Dam and Fort Randall Dams were completed two years later, Gavin's Point in 1956. Oahe, in '62, Big Bend a year later.
[Paul Johnston] But it's interesting to contrast to 1952 with 1997. We had the biggest run-off in the history of the 100 years since we've been keeping records. And it was very similar to '52. Lots and lots of moisture up stream and not much down stream. And the impact here in Omaha? Nothing. All the water was captured in the big reservoirs and over the course of the summer and into the fall and nobody got flooded.
[Hamer] An interesting thing is, that probably none of the development down along the Omaha waterfront would be possible if hadn't been for those controls. Because goodness knows you could have another '52 flood anytime.
[Bill Kelly] This was national news, that Nebraska and Iowa fought the Missouri River, and won.
[President Truman] When you understand if not for some fore handedness Omaha, right this minute would have its industrial district completely washed out. I hope that wont happen.
[Bill Kelly] Fifty years later, there's still a downtown Omaha. And they did it with out losing a single human life.
[Cunningham] If you are proud of your city as I was, born and raised here. I just took it for granted that I could do it. And I did it. With the help of a bunch of people.
[Ray Clark broadcast] And how long will you last, any idea? [Volunteer] Oh until I get relief. It looks like it might be all night. [Clark] You never can quite tell when you get out on the dike. All right, thank you fellows.
For STATEWIDE, I'm Bill Kelly