Great Flood of 1913: Ohio’s worst weather disaster
Columbus and Central Ohio Weather
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A stormy pattern in late March 1913 culminated in catastrophic flooding throughout the Ohio Valley region and surrounding states. The unfolding disaster claimed more than 900 lives, including at least 467 in Ohio.
Powerful southwesterly gales caused considerable damage and several injuries in northwestern Ohio on March 21, 1913, with wind gusts near 80 mph at Toledo. This was the first of several intense storms to impact the region during the first week of spring.
A series of low-pressure systems would move northeast along a frontal boundary that stalled, setting up a trough of low pressure wedged against a blocking pattern of high pressure over the western Atlantic.
Waves of moisture followed from March 23-27, falling on saturated soils. The heaviest rainfalls in Ohio (6 to 10 inches) occurred in a band from southwest to northeast through the middle of the state. Extreme totals topped 10 inches in the northwest, including 11.16 inches at Bellefontaine, 10.61 inches at Marion, and 10.46 inches at Upper Sandusky.
In Columbus, the rain that began falling on Easter Sunday 1913 became heavy at times over a four-day period. Downtown Columbus received 6.97 inches of rain from March 23-27, and 7.86 inches accumulated at the Ohio State weather site, before cold air rushed into the state. In northeastern Ohio, the rain turned to freezing rain March 25-27, resulting in an ice storm.
Every river in Ohio flowed over its banks. The Scioto River at Prospect crested 9 feet above flood stage (21 feet) in Marion County and 13.2 feet above flood stage (28.2 feet) downstream at Circleville. A levee failure around 10 a.m. on March 25 along the Scioto River in Columbus caused water to pour into low-lying West Side neighborhoods.
Dick Hoffman, a board member of the Hilltop Historical Society, talked to a survivor of the 1913 flood many years ago, who said that her family fled to the second story during the storm. “They would have planks between houses, so people could move from house to house above the water,” Hoffman recalled from their conversation.
From Thunder in the Heartland by Thomas and Jeanne Schmidlin: “The rush of floodwaters through railroad underpasses created whirlpools and great rapids Tuesday night [March 25] that scoured away nearly every building for four blocks on Glenwood and Central Avenues (George W. Mindling, Weather Headlines in Ohio [1944]).”
With swirling water reaching depths of 9 to 17 feet in East Franklinton, then known as “The Bottoms,” residents frantically climbed to the upper stories and roofs of homes, some grasping desperately onto trees while awaiting rescue.
All three main city bridges were wiped out, cutting Columbus in half, as debris was swept downstream. Nearly 500 homes and businesses were destroyed and more than 4,000 were damaged.
Schmidlin’s book noted the historic flooding along the Olentangy River at Delaware, which reached 23 feet above flood stage: “Sandusky Street was 8 feet under water” in the first such flood ever known. All the bridges in Delaware were destroyed, along with 33 homes, resulting in 18 deaths. A similar death toll was reported at Chillicothe, where three-quarters of the city was under water.
The floods were also destructive in the Miami Valley in western Ohio, where hundreds of lives were lost from Piqua and Dayton to Hamilton and Middletown. The floodwaters reached a depth of 10 feet on downtown streets in Dayton.
In the northwestern part of the state, heavy flooding was reported along the Maumee and Sandusky River basins. Considerable damage afflicted areas around Cleveland, Warren and Youngstown.
Widespread flooding developed along the Ohio River as the water moved rapidly downstream. Cities from eastern Illinois through Indiana, Ohio western Pennsylvania and New York State were also heavily impacted by overflowing rivers.
According to the 1925 History of Ohio by C. B. Galbreath, a 15-year-old resident of Hilltop, Herbert V. Akerberg, was the first person to use amateur radio in a disaster, sending messages through Morse code on the afternoon of March 26, 1913.
Akerburg covered the tragedy on the West Side, aiding rescue efforts by providing updates on the dire situation, for which his work was “highly commended by city authorities, and his achievement widely heralded over the country as a new contribution to the comparatively new science of radio.” He later would have a distiguished career with the Columbia Broadcasting System’s radio and television networks.
William Oxley Thompson, president of The Ohio State University in 1913, offered assistance through the university’s military science program, requesting student cadets to assist in the evacuation of families trapped by floodwaters and distributing food, clothing and other types of aid.
In western Ohio, the Miami Conservancy District (MCD) developed an extensive flood control project that was completed in 1922, to protect the region from catastrophic flooding.
The Columbus area, and many parts of Ohio, suffered through another damaging flood in January 1959 that resulted in 16 deaths in Ohio and thousands of residents being evacuated.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the 7.2-mile Franklinton Flood Wall, with a network of floodgates, was constructed west of the Scioto River near Downtown. The work was completed in early 2004.
Total storm damage in March 1913 in Ohio was estimated at around $113 million, which today would be upwards of $3.5, adjusted for inflation.
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