LYMAN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief

A Week of

THEODORE

HAMILTON W. MABIE, Associate Editor ROOSEVELT

Even by the end of last week Devastation it was impossible to form anything like a close estimate of the number of those who have perished in the terrible disasters caused by extraordinary and unprecedented storm conditions. That daily newspaper reports as late as Friday differed by hundreds and even by thousands in their estimate of the number of the dead was due not so much to a desire for sensationalism as to the absolute impossibility of summarizing statistically the horrors and calamities which were still existing and continuing. These disasters will have serious and long-continued consequences. Here only an outline of the causes and progress of the calamity is given. At as early a date as possible Mr. Arthur Ruhl, the well-known newspaper correspondent and magazine writer, who was despatched last week by The Outlook as its special commissioner to the flood-devastated region, will give a careful survey of the situation as he finds it. In a large sense the cause of disasters in States far removed and from different causes was ultimately the same; the Far West and the Middle West have experienced storms and rainfall which have no recorded equals in volume, suddenness, rapidity, and long continuance. The forecaster of the United States Weather Bureau declares that "there have been heavier rainstorms in restricted localities before, but such a heavy precipitation extending over three or four days in such a large area is unprecedented." Thus, in Indiana and Ohio there was a continuous downpour for two days and two nights, whereas there are very few records of such downpours lasting over twenty-four hours in one locality. This remarkable fall of rain accompanied immense storms which had resulted, so the Weather Bureau believes, from unusual conditions of heat and high humidity. There were three great cyclonic storms: the first originated in

British Columbia on March 17, and swept southeasterly through Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, and then turned sharply to the northeast and passed over Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, and down the St. Lawrence Valley; the second originated in Utah on March 19, and swung down through New Mexico and Texas, then, also turning northeast, it followed in the track of the first; while the third originated in Nevada on March 22, swept eastward across Utah and Colorado, and then northeastward through Nebraska, Iowa, and Michigan.

Tornadoes are often develThe Tornadoes oped locally by such great cyclonic storms. The first of the three storms was followed by tornadoes in Texas and Arkansas, which produced terrible destruction of forests and immense losses thereby, together with other injury; tornadoes following the third storm swept away a great part of the city of Omaha, in Nebraska, with serious loss of life; while the tremendous downfall of rain in the Middle West and the devastation in Ohio and Indiana were a result of the disturbed atmospheric conditions caused by all three storms in their cumulated effects. A tornado, it should be remembered, is comparatively a local storm-in the words of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, it is "a violent revolving local storm of small diameter and great intensity." Certain sections of the country, the Atlantic seacoast, for instance, are free from tornadoes; elsewhere there are "tornado belts" in which such local disturbances are made possible by physical and atmospheric conditions. A tornado is not often more than a few hundred yards in diameter, and it advances in a straight path not often exceeding a few miles in length; but while it lasts the wind frequently rushes around in its small circle at a speed of two hundred miles an hour. It was such a

tornado that on Easter Sunday struck Omaha, often called the "Gate City" of Nebraska. Estimates made near the end of the week declare that between two and three hundred people were killed, perhaps a thousand injured, while some two hundred and fifty residences were destroyed, and a total property loss resulted that will reach into the millions. Following the tornado in Omaha came a heavy snowstorm which added intensity to the suffering. In a less degree, what happened in Omaha happened in Terre Haute in Indiana, and in several small places in Nebraska, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri. The more extensive disaster in the Ohio valleys in a measure diverted public attention from the tornadoes, but that form of devastation, aided as it was by blizzards and local floods, was in itself a startling calamity. The people in Omaha and Terre Haute and the people of the States involved took up with immense energy the work of relief, and have required little assistance from outside

sources.

The Floods

The flood catastrophes in the Ohio Valley did in the Ohio Valley not result from an increase of volume in the Ohio River itself, but from the sudden influx of immense volumes of water into the tributary system of rivers which lies between Lake Erie to the north and the Ohio River to the south. Thus, the Great Miami River enters the Ohio at Cincinnati, and in its southern course passes through Piqua, Dayton, Hamilton, and other towns; it is fed by many tributaries, and it is connected by a series of canals and great reservoirs with the Maumee River, which flows northeast to Toledo and Lake Erie. In the same way, but east of this Miami system, the Scioto River also flows south to the Ohio and enters it at Portsmouth, passing through Ohio's capital, Columbus, and having a connection by canal and by the Sandusky River with Lake Erie on the north. Still a third river, the Muskingum, flowing south into the Ohio at Marietta, likewise has its system of tributaries and its canal and river connection with Lake Erie at Cleveland, while Zanesville is one of the chief towns on its banks. Practically the same thing happened at Dayton and Piqua on the Miami, at Columbus and other towns on the Scioto, and at Zanesville and other places on the Muskingum. Incessant rainfall suddenly converted these rivers and canals and reservoirs into sources of raging torrents;

some of the smaller reservoirs burst, the larger ones overflowed, canals broke their artificial banks and mingled with the rivers, the levees and walls intended to keep back any ordinary rise of the rivers from the towns proved of no avail, and the cities named and others of less importance were inundated for days. At Dayton many hundreds of people were cut off in houses and business buildings in which they had taken refuge, while other hundreds were drowned by the sudden incursion of the floods. Only towards Thursday night did the waters begin to recede and it then became possible to take the refugees off in boats. Attempts to compile lists of the dead were all but impossible. In Dayton and elsewhere widespread fires doubled the horrors of the situation. Railway bridges were washed away by the flood, and railway connection with other parts of the country was for a time completely cut off. Among the reports of Friday morning were such as those from Dayton that fifty thousand people in Dayton were homeless and the food supply limited, that it was feared that two or three hundred people had perished, that fifteen thousand residences were submerged, and $25,000,000 worth of property destroyed; from Zanesville, that six hundred buildings had been washed away; from Columbus, that the number of dead might be anywhere from five hundred to a thousand; from Hamilton, that the city was under martial law, and that fire was doing great damage; and from Piqua, that the loss of life was estimated at two hundred. Governor Cox, of Ohio, in a letter to the New York "Times" declared that half the large railway bridges in Ohio were down, and that the property loss in the State would exceed that of San Francisco after the earthquake. These are only specimen reports, so to speak, of the confused and sometimes contradictory messages which rapidly followed one another from the stricken region. By Saturday it became evident that the first reports as to loss of life were greatly exaggerated. Indiana suffered in much the same way and from the same causes as did Ohio; Peru reported at least one hundred dead; Marion, Brookville, Noblesville, and other towns were flooded, with loss of life and property. In northeastern New York there was serious loss

by flood. The Ohio and Mississippi Rivers rose rapidly after they received the floods from their tributaries, dangerous high-water conditions followed, and apprehension was felt for