Meet the Author of The Great Dayton Flood of 1913
Commonly referred to as the Great Dayton Flood, many people have forgotten that the entire Midwest from Pittsburgh to St. Louis was nearly washed away as well. Three months of rain fell in four days and the lowlands of Ohio became a veritable inland sea. The locks of the old canal systems had to be dynamited for flood relief and were lost forever. Damage was estimated at $100,000,000 (in 1913 dollars.) And 65,000 people from Dayton alone were forced to flee their homes.
From the first drop of rain to the aftermath and the innovations in technology and disaster relief that followed, historian Trudy E. Bell pieces together the story of the flood with photographs, documents and personal stories. She presents her findings in both her latest book and an illustrated lecture at the Library on Sunday, April 6 at 2:00 p.m. The handsome coffee-table style book will be available for sale at the event and the author will be available for book-signing after the lecture.
A professional writer with over four-hundred articles and a dozen books on science and history under her belt, Bell found her inspiration on a 2003 bicycle trip along the Ohio & Erie Canal. “Along that stretch, a number of historical markers say something to the effect of ‘there used to be an X here, but X was destroyed by the flood of 1913.’” Curiosity aroused, she turned to the Internet, finding references to the 1913 flood throughout Ohio and in West Virginia and Indiana, as well. “When I discovered record flooding for those same dates in Troy, New York, I remember sinking back in my chair and realizing, ‘This 1913 flood is a truly huge story!’ And outside of Dayton it seemed to have been almost forgotten.”
Bell’s research didn’t end with an Internet search. Nor did it end in the library after she read nearly every book and government report available on the subject. Once she mastered the basic facts of the science and the historic factors that created the disaster, she traveled to Dayton and surrounding areas. She spent weeks pouring through photographic collections and historical archives searching for the human stories behind the great flood. What she found was startling.
Whether you come to the lecture or just read the book, Bell expects you’ll be moved by, “The stunning photographs of the ruined homes with Daytonians picking through the wreckage of their lives, the heroism of risky high-water rescues, the evidence of the raw power of the floodwaters.”
Pondering the impact of her research, the author muses, “I hope it will remind people not to forget what happened in the not-so-distant past—with the sober reminder that another flood of similar geographical extent and magnitude could well happen again.”
