By Dwight Woodward
As it is during many springs, the weather had been cool and wet in Athens in May 1968. Then came the downpour that wouldn't stop. Beginning May 23, fou r inches of rain fell on Athens County in a 24-hour period, causing the area's worst flood in 55 years.
|
| Student housing in Lakeview Apartments adjacent to South Green was hit hard by the flood of 1968 (above), as was the Peden Stadium area bordering the Hocking River (below). Photos courtesy of Alden Library Archives & Special Collections |
 |
By May 25, the Great Flood of '68 swelled the Hocking River in Athens to a crest of 24.63 feet eight feet above flood stage forcing evacuations of Ohio University students from several residence halls and flooding classroom buildings.
Classes continued uninterrupted, but flood waters rushed into Porter and Seigfred halls, two major clas sroom buildings. Two student apartment buildings, Wolfe and Ullom halls, also were evacuated. Power was out in Sargent, James, Irvine and Wilson residence halls, three academic buildings, Grover Center and Peden Stadium. University cafeterias remained open, and employees absent because of the flood were replaced by student volunteers.
National television news coverage of the flood prompted numerous telephone calls from concerned parents, remembers Roy Cross, BSJ '48, district editor of The Athens Messenger at the time and coordinator of the paper's 1968 flood coverage.
"When the flood got on national TV, it created a minor panic for the parents of Ohio University students," Cross says now. "There was no one in danger of starving or drowning, but parents' phone calls jammed the telephone switchboards. Parents had visions of the kids floating around their living rooms. Of course, students weren't in their rooms."
Students took to the flooded city streets, joining high school students , Boy Scouts and other volunteers in filling sandbags to help control the flooding. Some 200 homes in Athens were evacuated.
Much of the sandbagging was done along the raised Baltimore and Ohio Railroad levee on the city's east side. High water on Morris Avenue and below Mill Street prevented access to the area, and then-Mayor Raymond Shepard praised students, many of whom carried waterlogged sandbags hundreds of feet down the railroad tracks to the worst-hit areas.
National Guard trucks with student helpers aboard rescued trapped residents, pulled stranded cars and provided other assistance to Athenians.
Finance Professor Azmi Mikhail and his family were evacuated from their home on Townsend Place by the National Guard. Ironically, the Mikhail family had recently arrived from Cairo, Egypt, where Mikhail had never seen the Nile River pose such a high-water threat as the relatively minuscule Hocking.
"We just left everything in the house, got in the trucks with the Guard and went to the middle school," Mikhail said. "Our neighbor slept through the flood and she woke up to find her bed floating from one room to the other."
The family spent a day at the school before friends heard Mikhail in a radio interview and took them in for a few nights.
Chauncey, Nelsonville, Amesville, Logan and other areas of Southeastern Ohio also were damaged in the flooding. Many students went as far north as Nelsonville to help stem the tide.
|
| Ohio University students work to help control the flooding |
The flood caused $8.9 million in damage to Athens County and some $750,000 to Ohio University, but it did not come as a surprise to many area residents. Back-to-back floods in 1963 and '64 forced evacuations of students from residence halls and caused extensive damage to Grover Center, where the wooden basketball floor warped and buckled.
"Athens had become accustomed to being surrounded by floods," Cross says. "If you look at the map, it's surrounded by the Hocking River on three sides. The entire South Green was residential and it would always flood. It was almost an annual thing to cover the spring flood."
Less severe flooding came again in 1969, but by then the $11 million Hocking River relocation project was under way. The project rerouted a five-mile stretch of the river, eliminating a section of the river that once fl owed along the northern edge of West Green, the source of much of the flood damage. As part of the project, the four-lane Richland Avenue bridge was constructed and the Mill Street bridge was demolished and replaced by the Stimson Avenue bridge.
The rerouting of the Hocking was completed in 1971, with the university covering 80 percent of the local cost through its state capital funding $375,000 a year for 22 years to complete the project.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that designed the Ho cking River project estimates more than $48 million in flood damage has been averted since the project was completed.
Heavy rains in late May 1990 brought the Hocking River to a crest of 22.84 feet in Athens, the highest since 1968, causing more than $4 million in damage to Southeastern Ohio and prompting President Bush to declare Athens and three other counties disaster areas.
Yet the campus sustained no damage in the flood of 1990 and then-Physical Plant Director Chuck Culp estimated th at rerouting the river saved the university more than $500,000 in flood damage.
