City Proves Man Can Ward Off Disaster
Article taken from The Edwardsville Intelligencer, March 30, 1936
Anybody who lives beside an American river
might do well to reflect on two things-the case of Portsmouth, O., and
the fable of the three little pigs.
The pigs, as you may remember, set out to build houses. One pig
saw trouble coming, built a solid house of brick, and got by nicely when the
huffing and puffing began. The other little pigs, building less securely,
had a great deal of trouble.
Now, Portsmouth is a solid industrial city nestled down on a point of
land between the Ohio and Scioto rivers. Some years ago the citizens decided
to take a leaf from the smart pig's book and got ready for trouble. So
they laid out $750,000 to build a great steel and concrete flood wall along
the waterfront.
There are a good many other cities along the Ohio, from Pittsburgh to
Cincinnati, and of them all Portsmouth seems to have been the only one that
went to the expense of putting up a big wall. There must have been years
when the $750,000 put into that wall looked like a bad investment.
But Portsmouth sat tight and waited. This spring the snows melted,
the rains descended, and the waters rose; and what happened?
Every other city in the vicinity was flooded. From Pittsburgh, where
catfish made their nests among the lamp posts of the main stem, all the way down
to the neighborhood of Cincinnati, the water went swishing through the streets,
driving people from their homes, workers from their shops, and merchants from
their stores. Many lives were lost; property damage rose to astronomical
figures.
But Portsmouth snuggled down behind its flood wall and went about its
business dry-shod. Its mill, railroad shops, and public utilities carried
on without a let-up. Children played unconcerned in yards 20 feet below
the level of the swollen river. Cash registers clicked and jangled in
stores that might easily have been full of water.
City Manager Frank E. Sheehan estimated that Portsmouth would have suffered
property damage of at least $1,000,000 if it had not been for the wall. Industrial
payrolls of $350,000 a week would have been suspended. There would have
been heaven knows how much suffering and hardship for individuals.
There is the neatest kind of moral in all this, both for those who live
in river cities and for those who do not.
Those great "natural" catastrophes that visit us every so often-whether
they be floods, industrial depressions, or wars-don't come out of a blue sky. We
can see them, years in advance. And despite all that we say about their
irresistible force, it is possible to get ready for them.
Portsmouth proved it. Isn't the tip worth taking?