Floodwaters and Flames: The 1913 Disaster in Dayton, Ohio

Gr 4–6—After an Easter ice storm with winds up to 90 miles per hour, two days of rain overwhelmed a levee on the Great Miami River, which rushed into Dayton, OH, at 25 miles per hour, flooding a 14-square-mile area. Though the 1913 disaster is not widely remembered today, the deluge and associated fires destroyed 20,000 homes and claimed more than 400 lives. In this time line-driven narrative, Huey shifts the perspective frequently among several survivors, including a city librarian, who scrambled to save thousands of children's books, and prominent Daytonians such as aviation pioneer Orville Wright and John Patterson, founder of the National Cash Register corporation. But perhaps the most fascinating figure is Bill Sloan, a pitcher with the Dayton Marcos who worked in a local foundry during the off-season. Sloan commandeered a boat at gunpoint and spent 60 hours rescuing more than 300 people stranded by the flood. Striking contemporaneous photos show floodwaters reaching to the rafters of homes in the city's less affluent neighborhoods and horses swimming past half-submerged streetlights downtown. The text includes a page of source notes, though nearly two-thirds of them refer to a single monograph.