Coffee County AlArchives News.....GRAPHIC STORY OF ELBA FLOOD TOLD BY CITIZEN OF STRICKEN COFFEE COUNTY 1929 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Alice F. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008183 April 26, 2017, 4:37 pm The Montgomery Advertiser 1929 (probably An April Issue) 1929 The Montgomery Advertiser 1929 (Probably an April Issue) GRAPHIC STORY OF ELBA FLOOD TOLD BY CITIZEN OF STRICKEN COFFEE COUNTY By J. A. Carnley, Probate Judge, Coffee County It has been four long weeks today since the boats and airplanes and many brave and heroic men came to the little town of Elba to relieve their great distress. During the day and night before, news of the flood was being flashed over the wires, radios and carried by the newspapers. Never have I known of such heroic service. The people of Elba were sitting, standing and hanging above the mad, rushing currents, uprooting great trees, undermining residences, sweeping them from their foundations and crashing buildings. It was in Elba more than a flood of waters; it was a war of cannibalistic currents, eating great holes, excavations, and opening new river beds. Three streams converge in and near the little courthouse town. Elba, beautiful and picturesque, was divided into three divisions by Beaver Dam Creek, White Water Creek and Pea River. For 75 years Elba has had no such experience. In 1888, there was what older people called a flood in Elba. At that time the water flowed through the town, rising about three feet on the Court Square. The town was not destroyed. The people thought they know [knew?] the high water marks. On March 14, 1929, the floods came. From the hills to the northeast, north and northwest came with mighty and terrible force the waters from three streams. They came fighting and eating their way into each other and covering and sweeping things from their foundations. It had rained Tuesday and Wednesday and on Thursday morning the darkening clouds hovered above us. All day Thursday and Thursday night the rains fell and beat upon the rising floods. Elba is almost completely surrounded by hills and from these hills the streams mentioned pour into the little valley where the town is situated. From the watershed along the old military road, long known as Three-Notch Road, the tributaries of the streams mentioned drain the waters towards and into Elba. It is like unto water coming from wide stretches of territory into a funnel. On the northwest is Cemetery Hill, on the east, Law Hill, on the south, May Hill, and a high hill hugs Pea River for miles to the northeast of Elba. Why has there been no such catastrophe before this? Only the incessant rains, the torrential downpour of water, seeking an outlet, gives the correct answer, physically understood and explained. Why were the people, for the first time in their history, marooned in their housetops? Why were they not destroyed? It is a miracle that the people were saved from bodily destruction. After the waters came rolling, jumping and leaping high into town, the rains fell and continued to fall all day and all night, and was falling when at dawn Friday morning the floods ceased to rise and at once began to fall. This was a miracle, being contrary to all natural and reasonable conclusions, and this water standing still and falling Friday, with no second rise thereafter, stands out as a miracle as certain as that of the sun standing still at the command of Joshua. The people over the state were advised of Elba’s great distress and they prayed for us and we prayed with that faith which takes no denial, not for selfish reasons, not to save property, but to save all the people in Elba. The boats could not get in so long as the waters continued to rise. Many were standing on the hills trying to answer the wails and calls for help. There was no chance to rescue. The roar of the waters was like a storm on the ocean. The cutting currents meant only death to the boatmen. ONLY A FEW BOATS The waters began rolling and leaping through the town about 9 o’clock Thursday morning. There were few boats, and they could do little. Boats were dashed like cork on the mighty currents. Some waded out, pulling and pushing their way to safety, but this did not continue long as the waters were too deep or too swift to make it out. Some few reached the courthouse, some the May building, some in two-story hotels, some in the Page building, a two story brick structure. The first to get away from their homes were those living in the lower places of town. They could not get out of town. The town was marooned by the streams, on the east by Pea River, on the northeast by White River and on the west and northwest by Beaver Dam Creek. Cemetery Hill northwest was pouring volumes of rapid currents into town. Swiftly and quickly the waters rose to a depth [and] there was no safety unless within the homes. Some managed to cross streets by aid of ropes and climb to the attics of neighboring houses. All means of travel was soon cut off. No cars could run, no wagons and then no boats. The waters, with maddening rush, were lapping into homes. Furniture was being raised from the floors of residences. Soon the water was waist deep in houses and was churning things around the rooms and dashing them against the walls. Porches were being swept clean of chairs and settees. People were standing on tables to stay above the rising flood and force. You could hardly keep yourself steady wading around inside the house. The force was so great inside the houses. What were the people to do? We can give our personal experience only. In our home were my wife, my ten-year-old boy, SAMUEL FLEETWOOD, and myself. Our married daughter, MRS. T. D. KENDRICK, lived a short distance from us, only across the block. She and her husband carried their babies across one street to W. M. BULLARD’S home and there climbed with others into the top of the house, it being a one and one-half story building. My home was a bungalow being built unusually high from the ground, a frame structure, with spacious rooms. In the kitchen ceiling was a “man hole” about 18 inches square. It was fully 12 feet to the ceiling and to this “man hole” in the ceiling. My telephone was in the rear of the big hall and I kept my wife and boy on the settees and then on a table on the front porch while I called repeatedly the telephone operator. MISS VIVIAN HARP [HARPER] was at the central office and I dare say there has never been such wonderful service as she rendered that morning while she sat above the currents driving with lightning speed by the little telephone building, a two story structure. (This building is sitting there now, the second story now being the first and only part of the building.) The last time I talked with MISS HARPER, she said that she would soon have to get away to save her life. OPERATOR A HEROINE She is a heroine. The Lord saved her, but she was thrown from her boat into the rising currents and was pulled by a rope into a building across the street from the telephone office. I called to Enterprise and to New Brockton and asked them to truck their boats speedily to the river bridge and try to get the people out to safety. The last time I called I found the boats had left Enterprise and New Brockton. A neighbor, MR. JARRELL, a teacher in our high school, called me and I told him to call the Troy operator and send the call for boats. It [the water] was soon to be above our phones and there would be no means to spread the news to the world. I had hoped to get a boat across the way, which I called, to come and get my wife and boy. My wife had been sick for some days, and I feared that it would mean her death to get wet, and then, too, it was not safe to be caught in the currents, cutting their way through town. Time demanded that I get my wife and boy above the waters and right quickly. I took the breakfast table, the kitchen table and another from the living room and stacked them one upon another and then placed on the top of the third table a large, floating wood box. This contrived a means to raise my wife and boy to the “Man Hole” in the ceiling, but was a treacherous trap. I took my boy and carried him from the front porch to the kitchen cabinet sitting by the tables and then carried my wife from the table on the front porch through the hall and on my back to the kitchen cabinet. My wife said, “You can’t carry me.” I said yes, I can carry two. She did not get her feet wet either. My wife and boy then standing on the kitchen cabinet a little above the water, I went to the front porch again and tried to fasten some things within the screen porch, fastened the doors and went again to the front. There I found an old rooster which had floated to the corner of the porch. I took him and carried him to the kitchen and placed him high above the water, but to no avail, for he was drowned. I had to act quickly, going a second time to the front and the big door to the front hall was fastened tightly by the force of the water in the hall and to my fright I found myself locked on the outside, with my wife and boy standing on the kitchen cabinet and trapped in the flood unless I could get back into the house. Giving a push with all my strength against the door, it would not budge. I fastened my hand as a support in the edge of the screen door and gave a mighty lunge against the door. It moved and the water began streaming through a small opening I had made. Holding to the screen door I again exerted my power and strength and the door was open. I reached my wife and boy about the time they were ready to get into the water and hunt me. Holding the trap of tables I asked my wife and boy to get through the “man hole.” This hole looked too small for me. I had on my full suit and was wet to my waist and above. There was no one to hold the tables for me. Cautiously I climbed upon them. The least shove would wreck them and cause them to fall, the legs of the second table was nearing the edges of the first and water was pouring over the first table. It was a trap, but I succeeded in getting my left elbow through the hole and above the ceiling and then my right elbow, and with my head in this hole and my feet swinging beneath the ceiling, I verily pulled myself with my elbows through and went to the attic. I do not believe I could do this under ordinary conditions. Some have seen this hole and questioned my going through it, but I did. We were then safely in the attic, the dark and smutty attic of our home. Where were my daughter, her husband, and the precious babies. I could not know. I could not know any more where anybody was and whether the people were staying above the waters or being drowned. All day I could know the waters were rising and rapidly too. No phones now. No radio in the attic. No sending messages out of town or within town. A little hammer on the kitchen cabinet was carried above and with it we beat a hole through the roof, both a shingle and composition roof on my house. A little stream of light came through and we saw that the laths were so close we could not get through between them. I had no tool except my pocket knife and I began with it to cut a one by four, hard seasoned lath. I told my wife that I had heard of a mouse cutting into a great cable and I knew that I could cut the lath with my knife by continued effort. From one side and then the other, I cut and bore my knife against the stubborn lath until I could separate it with a small piece of plank picked up in the attic. A hole was then made so we could get through to the top of the roof if necessity required. All day and all night the torrential and incessant rains beat through this little hole in my house top. We sat or stood behind it and we could look through and see the waters continue to rise. Dark came and no boats had made appearance. It was pitch dark, midnight darkness in Elba. My clock on the high mantel stopped at the minute of midnight in Elba. It was so standing for days after the flood, and I told my wife it was “midnight” in the little town. The good cheer since the flood is in the thought that the Lord saved our lives. We are happy in this miraculous escape. “WATCHFUL WAITING” Thursday night was a quiet and peaceful resignation, “watchful waiting,” a tranquility that springs from faith in God. As I looked through the little hole in my roof, by the lightning flashes I could see that the waters were rising and rising through the dark and dismal night. There was no light to be seen except an occasional stream of light penetrating from the May Building, being a flash light turned across the waters. Yes, we did have light besides the lightning flash and blaze; it was spiritual light from heaven. In the dark attic this light shone respendent [resplendent] in our souls. We knew that God would save the people of Elba, would save our physical bodies and we hoped that He would save our souls. We prayed that He would save the people of Elba. They seemed during the dark night to be silently and patiently waiting for the Lord to take them from their distress. My wife said if it would stop raining there would be hope for the boats to come later but it seemed that the waters would continue to rise and rise until the people thus marooned would be deluged beneath the rising flood. This was a human understanding. God could and did stop the rise while the waters were falling in torrents upon the town. It was a confusion of sounds through the night. It seems to me that we could hear every kind of noise made by waters. The crashing of buildings, the rattling, rumbling noises made by the drift, the hurling of house against house. Some times the waters would burst against the ceiling, against the walls of my house, things would fall and dash against the windows and break them. Currents were penetrating my home with tremendous force, on both sides and under it I could hear lumbering and frightful noises. Would the house fall? Humanly considered, it seemed so. There we were hovering above on the uncomfortable beams to which the ceiling was nailed. Would the waters come to us and force us onto the roof and in the down fall of a continuous rain? Between 1 and 2 o’clock in the morning, as best we could keep the time, a storm came, with flash upon flash of the lightning, a continuous blaze of light. What would happen now if a tornado should strike us thus marooned in our house tops with the driving force beneath us? How could we know the will of the Lord? We prayed with sober thought, with resignation to the will of the Father Who knows best. If it should be His will to destroy our bodies in the tearing and warring currents of waters, we relied on Him to save our souls for the floodless home, not our will but His be done, and God knew that we could not snatch ourselves from the impending dangers. The storm missed us. Our house tops were left us. The people were saved from death, except two colored men. We came out of the flood with as many living souls, there being two born during this distressful time. It was only a miracle that the people of Elba escaped with their lives. I do not doubt this. CUT OFF FROM WORLD Elba was cut off from all communications that dreadful night. We could not vision from our dark attics that night what was going on in Montgomery and in Birmingham, what was happening and what was doing in Opp, in Florala, in Enterprise, in New Brockton, in Luverne, in Troy, in Ozark, Dothan, in Florida towns and many other places. We could not see both white and colored people on their knees in their homes begging God to save the people in Elba, and in other flood stricken places. We had no radios. We had no telephones then and we had no one to send, not a dove to carry or bring a message. We were at our eternity, and this was God’s opportunity to speak to us, if never before. After the flood I asked a friend if he prayed and he was not a man of prayer, and he told me that he did, that he asked God to have mercy and save us. It was a time of distress, but the people of this little town bravely confronted this situation. They had faith in the God of wars, famines and floods that night. Great holes were torn through the streets of the little town. Great excavations sank to depths residences. Houses creaned [careened?] and went down and floated away. Some for great distances. Others were caught in tree tops. Cars were buried in sand piles and plunged beneath houses in holes. Great oaks were uprooted. Brick buildings were torn to pieces. Houses went down the river to be seen no more. Who tried to get in on boats were hurled against and on house tops and stayed until rescued days afterwards. It was destruction, devastation, disaster, but not death, except two negro men. One died like a hero, trying to rescue from a neighboring building a sick girl. One was blind, became excited and jumped from a box car. This was GABRIEL, THE WESTERN UNION EMPLOYE [EMPLOYEE]. We trust the Lord saved their souls. Daylight came and the announcement that the waters had stopped rising and were falling. They continued to abate until by 3 o’clock Friday they had fallen 18 inches. This was miraculous, I say. The boats could now venture into town. Boats from everywhere. Boats were there waiting all night, some few [a good number]. Boats were made on the hills. Motors were sent from Montgomery on airplanes, landed at Enterprise and trucked to Elba. Boats were trucked from distant points towards Elba. Swollen streams were bridged and men and boys came with mighty courage through the storm and streams to reach us, and they finally came. The birds of the air flew above us Friday, hesitating, viewing and picturing a people almost submerged beneath a gulf of waters. I am indebted to MR. ERNEST MANNING of Florala, for being rescued between 3 and 4 o’clock Friday, March 15, 1929. We had had nothing to eat, nothing to drink since Thursday morning. It was chilling in the attic. The airplanes dropped food on the May Building. My boy wished that they would drop some through the hole on the roof of my house. We went to Cemetery Hill Friday and had supper Friday night at the home of a good farmer, MR. MCCORD. Help Calls Distressing Friday night the distress continued with the people in shaky and insecure houses and on roof tops and in trees. It was impossible for the boats to get them out in the dark, wires, trees and currents, mad rushing waters. After I was boated out, I could hear the calls for help all over the town. I could not hear this while in and amidst the roar and noise of the waters. Only one woman I could hear scream through the night. This was my neighbor across the street from my home. The first boat came near my home on Friday about 12 o’clock. DR. HUGH MCKINNON of Troy, COL. STONE and MAJOR LEE. They were trying out the currents. They would dash into trees at that time, but I asked them to go to the Brick Hotel, which I understood was falling down gradually. Twenty persons were there in danger of destruction. They went, and all were saved. I was told that several boats were working and they would be back and get my neighbor, but I learned later that this boat was capsized and DR. MCKINNON and the others came near losing their lives. The governor of Alabama and of Elba that night was under direction of the Ruler of the Universe. The governor did a wonderful service for the rescue and relief. In the mansion he remembered us in our smutty attics. It was good and gracious and who knows but that he came to the administration for a time like this for the people of Elba and the other flood stricken districts of the state. With his great heart and brain he was sleeplessly serving a distressed people. The radio and the newspapers were busy. God bless these agencies for good. They flashed the news to the world. Men stood helpless, but Christian people everywhere were praying to God to save the people of Elba. I have had impressed upon me as never before that there is a reality in the religion of Christ. I have known this for many years, but I have a new vision of God and His goodness, His power and His mercy, as exemplified in the lives of His people. We are happy in the thought. The boats worked their best. Men risked their lives. Motors would die in the currents and the boats would dash to tree tops. The boat which carried my wife, boy and self out thus drifted when a pin slipped in the motor. I caught the limbs of a big water oak and held it until the boat could be repaired. Many boats capsized. We can never know the many, many deeds of sacrifice and daring, of heroism. There are heroes of war, and there are heroes of the flood in Elba. For days the air service continued as the people were brought to land, destitute of food and clothing. The Red Cross was on hand. The National Guard did yeoman service. The radio carried the news to the world and the people responded with gifts for relief. But let me tell you about our experience as we watched the people delivered by the boats. I am sure no photographer could picture and no artist could paint the distress in the faces of the people. Women were crying, had exhausted themselves with crying, men were pale, smutty and worn, and the precious children weak and trembling. I could hardly recognize some of the people. It was heart-rending. I shall never forget it. There was no means of communicating with the outside world even after we were on land. There were no telephones, no telegraph service, and we had to get telegrams to Troy to be sent to loved ones. I had two daughters and a son away. MARY OLIVE was teaching at Hartselle, SARAH ALBERT was in Judson College and JEFFERSON ALBERT was at Marion Military Institute. They had met on Friday in Birmingham to hear, if possible, the news from us. They could not know that we were alive. It was distressing to me that I could not tell them. I learned that stories galore were being published and broadcasted about people floating down the river, about the school children, about many dead. As quickly as I could I got in touch with newspaper representatives, I attempted to correct some of these reports. I met Saturday morning a Birmingham News reporter (do not recall his name), likewise The Birmingham Post, Associated Press man, and The Alabama Journal. I learned that these papers were getting out extras every 30 minutes. By this means I first got word to my distressed children and to many others so anxious about the people, friends and relatives in Elba. I will and want to write more. Must stop now. -- END Additional Comments: Elba is in Coffee Co., Alabama. Governor Bibb Graves was in office in 1929. (He served 1927-1931 and 1935-1939.) Mrs. Minola Libert is named in some accounts of the flood as being a relief operator working with the phone operator Miss Vivian Harper that night. One account names “Phoe” Larkins as one of the African-American men who died. Keep in mind in reading accounts of this event in old newspapers that many reported incorrect information in their rush to get out the news, especially when reporting a large number of deaths. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/coffee/newspapers/graphics1888gnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/ File size: 23.6 Kb