I've been thinking about floods and natural disasters for three different reasons.
First, on the front page of DKos today, in The business of the government, Laurence Lewis wrote this:
Coolidge was neoliberal before neoliberal was cool. He eviscerated regulation of industry by appointing regulators who did not regulate. He cut taxes and federal spending. He believed government should have no role in addressing social problems. He believed the federal government should not be responsible for flood control, and after the devastating 1927 Mississippi River flood refused even to visit the region. If it all sounds familiar, it should.
At first I asked myself, "Coolidge -- are you sure? Wasn't it Hoover who handled the flood of 1927?" It turns out that Coolidge was the President but Hoover, as Secretary of Commerce, was put in charge of the federal response to the flooding. This was long before FEMA.
The second reason I've been thinking about floods is that I recently moved from Seattle WA to the Fargo ND area, which is where i spent my youth. (It's a long story involving unemployment and moving in with my brother, but we will not speak of that at this time.) This year, in 2011, the Red River will flood for the third consecutive year. I'm planning to write a DKos diary about the 2011 flood once the snow starts to melt and the river approaches major flood levels. Which it will.
The third reason: the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown in Japan, the New Zealand earthquake, the recent Iceland volcano, the disappearance of polar ice, and various other things have led me to pay more attention to natural -- and man-made -- disasters.
More below the orange squiggly ornament (someone should invent a name for that squiggle). If you keep reading, I promise to reward you with three songs.
The Worst Flood in American History
According to the Wikipedia article, "The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States." In typical Wikipedia-esque fashion, they don't define what "most destructive" means. Most people killed or made homeless? Most economic destruction to the economy? Most water volume, or maybe most acres of land submerged? And do they mean United States (the actual nation founded in 1776) or is it going way back in history for the land area currently defined as the U.S.? The Wiki author gives a footnote leading to National Geographic, which says this:
And the rains came. They came in amounts never seen by any white man, before or since. They fell throughout the entire Mississippi River Valley, from the Appalachians to the Rockies. They caused widespread flooding that made 1927 the worst year ever in the valley. More water, more damage, more fear, more panic, more misery, more death by drowning than any American had seen before, or would again.
Some areas received rainfall that was ten times the annual average. New Orleans was drenched with 15 inches of rain in 18 hours. The Mississippi and its tributaries flooded as far north as Iowa, as far east as Kentucky, as far west as Oklahoma and Kansas. All of that water flowed into the Mississippi River and headed for New Orleans.
I'm not going to go into all the blow-by-blow details, so I'll start with some links you can click to read more about the great flood of 1927:
1. Wikipedia: Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 (fairly brief overview of the flood and its aftermath)
2. National Geographic Great Flood (a decent essay about the flood)
3. PBS ran a very good documentary on American Experience several years ago called "Fatal Flood" about the flood of 1927. Here's a link to their timeline of the flood (they have lots of other stuff at the PBS website with information about the flood, but you can't watch the documentary there -- and it's not on YouTube, as far as I can tell, probably because of copyright)
4. Here's a book review from the NY Times -- Boiling Over -- of a book called "The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America" by John M. Barry (read the review if you want a taste of the racial politics of 1920s Mississippi)
5. And for a conservative viewpoint, here's a 2005 report from the Congressional Research Service: The Executive Branch’s Response to the Flood of 1927 (the author, Kevin Kosar, has written for the American Enterprise Institute and the Weekly Standard, so his opinions lean to the right, but there are some facts in the report that are interesting (it's also funny that the first four paragraphs are repeated, like what you see sometimes from a newcomer on DKos))
How Bad Was The Flood?
From the 2005 CRS report (link #5):
In all, levees in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri broke in 145 places. Over 26,000 square miles of land in seven states inhabited by some 930,000 persons were flooded. The damage was immense — 41,487 buildings were destroyed, 162,017 homes flooded, and over $100 million [about $1.12 billion in 2005 dollars] in crops and farm animals destroyed. It is unclear how many persons were killed — accounts vary widely — but, it seems clear that at least 246 died. The total costs of the flood, though unclear, were huge. The Red Cross estimated direct economic losses at $246,000,000 [$2.75 billion in 2005]. The U.S. Weather bureau put direct losses at $355,147,000 [$3.97 billion]. Unofficial but authoritative estimates exceeded $500,000,000 [$5.59 billion]; with indirect losses, the number approached $1,000,000,000 [$11.18 billion], large enough in 1927 to affect the national economy.
It pitted neighbor against neighbor and whites against blacks.
What I remember from the PBS documentary (link #3) is that people on the east and west banks of the river didn't trust each other. The idea was this: If you could breach the levee on the other side of the Mississippi then those other people on the other side would be flooded. Your side of the river would be safe. So people put armed guards on their levees and dikes to keep away their enemies who lived on the other side of the river.
From Wikipedia:
As the flood approached New Orleans, Louisiana, about 30 tons of dynamite were set off on the levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana and sent 250,000 ft³/s (7,000 m³/s) of water pouring through. This was intended to prevent New Orleans from experiencing serious damage, but flooded much of St. Bernard Parish and all of Plaquemines Parish's east bank.
In Greenville, MS, Will Percy (adoptive father of Walker Percy) was in charge of the flood workers. From National Geographic (#2):
Percy ordered all Greenville blacks to the levee. The camp stretched seven miles. Percy ordered that all the Red Cross work be done for free. There were too few tents, not enough food, no eating utensils or mess hall. Black men were not allowed to leave--those who tried were driven back at gunpoint by the National Guard.
The food they received was inferior to what the whites got. Canned peaches came in, but were not distributed to blacks for fear it would "spoil them. Whites kept the good Red Cross food for themselves. Giving it to the blacks, one white man explained, "would simply teach them a lot of expensive habits."
The Weak Federal Response to the Flood And The Political Fallout
What did President Coolidge do about the flood? Not a whole lot; he believed in laissez-faire -- he wanted the private sector and private charities to handle the problem. It wasn't really something the government should spend money for. From the CRS report:
On April 22, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge issued a proclamation to the nation. He declared, “The Government is giving such aid as lies within its powers .... But the burden of caring for the homeless rests upon the agency designated by Government charter to provide relief in disaster — the American National Red Cross.” He made no mention of emergency appropriations. Rather, Coolidge, as President of the United States and the Red Cross, asked for the public to donate $5 million [$55.9 million in 2005 dollars] to the Red Cross. Additionally, the President created a quasi governmental commission to assist the Red Cross in the relief effort. Coolidge appointed Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, as chairman.
From Wikipedia:
The flood propelled Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who was in charge of flood relief operations, into the national spotlight and set the stage for his election to the Presidency. It also helped Huey Long be elected Louisiana Governor in 1928.
The flood had the unlikely effect of contributing to both the election of Herbert Hoover as President, and his defeat four years later. He was much lauded for his masterful handling of the refugee camps, but later concerns over the treatment of blacks in those camps caused him to make promises to the African-American community which he later broke, losing the black vote in his re-election campaign.
Several reports on the terrible situation in the refugee camps, including one by the Colored Advisory Commission by Robert Russa Moton, were kept out of the media at the request of Herbert Hoover, with the promise of further reforms for blacks after the presidential election. When he failed to keep the promise, Moton and other influential African-Americans helped to shift the allegiance of Black Americans from the Republican party to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats.
From the NY Times book review (#4):
Apart from what it revealed of human depravity, Mr. Barry says, the flood of 1927 changed America. It put Herbert Hoover in the White House, even while his duplicity in dealing with blacks helped begin the shift of black voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. It inspired Congress to pass a law putting responsibility for the Mississippi in Federal hands, making it easier for both Congress and the public to accept an even larger Federal presence during the New Deal years. And the pressures the flood brought to bear on the delicate racial fabric of the Deep South caused tears that could never be mended.
From the PBS documentary (as quoted in Wikipedia):
"After the flood, the Delta would never be the same. With their meager crops destroyed, and feeling deeply mistrustful of white Delta landlords after their poor treatment as refugees, thousands of African Americans left the area. Many headed north to seek their fortunes in Chicago."
And one more thing: No one -- as far as I could tell -- blamed the stock market crash of 1929 on the great flood of 1927. But I suspect the flood's effect on the economy might have contributed at least a bit to the crash.
Sooner Or Later Nature Will Do What It Wants
This is not directly related to the flood of 1927, but I thought I'd mention it. Ten or twenty years ago I read a book called "The Control of Nature" by John McPhee. I highly recommend it. McPhee writes about three different attempts by humans to control nature. One story is about a volcano in Iceland that threatened to send lava flowing into a harbor town. One is about the California wildfires/rain/mudslides that happen regularly. And the other is about the Army Corps of Engineers building levees and dikes to control the Mississippi River.
Update! I found McPhee's article about the Mississippi on the New Yorker website. Here's a link to page 1 of 27: Atchafalaya.
According to McPhee and the Army engineers, the Mississippi wants to change its course. With no human interference, as it flows south to the Gulf, the Mississippi would cut a new channel to somewhere near the eastern border of Texas. And that would ruin the economy of New Orleans. So the Army Corps of Engineers builds structures to control the river. They dredge out the silt that builds up. Sooner or later, however, the Mississippi will go where it wants to.
Now, Some Music About The Flood
Finally, here are the songs I promised above.
First, Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" (his mother was from Louisiana). I love this video. Lots of pictures of the 1927 flood. He mentions Plaquemines, which was flooded to save New Orleans.
Next, Led Zeppelin's version of "When The Levee Breaks:"
Before anyone complains that Led Zeppelin didn't write the song, I will point out that the song was originally written and recorded by husband and wife Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929. Here's the original song: