Portland, Oregon, USA
1948 - FLOOD CRASHES DENVER, UNION AVE. DIKES - Water Spills Into Kelso, Woodland - Vanport Homes Swept Eastward in Low Area, Man Plunged to Death
Cracking under the weight of water covering flooded Vanport, the Denver avenue and Union avenue roadway dikes washed out Monday night and spewed a ghostly cavalcade of Vanport homes in a deluge acress the lowlands to the east.
All along the Columbia river hundreds of weary flood fighters appeared to be losing their battle as Portland and Vancouver braced for the crest of the flood Tuesday night.
The Denver avenue breach was believed to have claimed the life of one man in a car which slid from the road into the raging torrent and over a 15-foot waterfall.
Sheriff's deputies later identified the car as an emergency vehicle of the Portland Electric Power company. They identified the man as Mike Skaggs, 420 S. E. Grant avenue.
Identification of Skaggs as the probable victim was made by his partner, A. Amorin, 32, Vancouver, who luckily did not go on the last ride.
Amorin said he and Skaggs had been installing floodlights on Bridgeton road and that Skaggs had gone for spare parts. He headed south on Denver avenue not knowing it had been breached.
The Vanport flood which struck Sunday was also blamed for the death of a woman refugee Monday night. She was Mrs. Mabel Powell, 54, who collapsed at the Jewish Community center. She was pronounced dead on arrival at Multnomah county hospital.
Workmen along the river east of Interstate bridge were ordered out of the area after the Denver and Union avenue dikes broke.
It was later reported that Faloma dike on the south edge of the river had broken in front of the Columbia Golf and Country club, but the army engineers denied this report at midnight. This, if true, would flood the area solid from Vanport east to the Peninsula canal dike just west of Portland-Columbia airport.
The flood waters from Vanport, which drain Smith lake and Columbia river overflow sections, swiftly inundated Portland Meadows, the open air theater and Portland speedway.
Within an hour the water was near the top of the Union avenue dike and the road was buckling and sagging. The road was closed by order of Sheriff Martin Pratt of Multnomah county. This sealed the last approach to Vancouver over the Interstate bridge.
The Denver dike break occurred about 9:15 p.m. at the Vanport underpass. Shortly after the Union avenue fill collapsed.
More than 100 men had labored all day to build a dike around rising water at the underpass turnaround, 500 feet north of where a culvert washed out at the entrance to the underpass. By nightfall engineers thought both places had been reinforced sufficiently to hold.
Gordon Black, 7239 N. Delaware avenue, was in charge of the underpass work group.
"I saw the water starting to stream out of the other side of the dike and yelled for everyone to get out of there," Black related.
"We ran as as fast as we could uphill to the top of the road."
Small Stream Becomes River
Within a matter of minutes the sandbag and earth dike gave away. What started as a small stream swelled to a river, then to a raging cataract.
While still shouting the alarm, Black and his workers saw large sections of the Denver sidewall earth give away.
As they watched, the current dragged one of Vanport's multiple dwelling units toward the underpass trestle. The house snapped off a tree and rammed into the trestle underpinnings, grinding them into splinters.
Then the house poked its way over the debris and tumbled over a 15-foot waterfall, turning end for end and smashing into matchwood.
Other houses were sucked into the opening and met similar fates. A few weathered the plunge and floated off toward Portland Meadows.
The breach widened quickly to about 500 feet and frequently several of the structures floated through abreast. They crashed over the falls with a tremendous groaning and wrenching of timbers. Clouds of dust from the old lumber filled the air.
At midnight the sheriff's office reported the Union avenue dike had been breached near the open air theater. This would soon fill the area behind the Faloma danger point. The Columbia Edgewater Golf club was in the line of the advancing flood.
Col. O. E. Walsh of the Portland corps of engineers ordered complete evacuation fo the Columbia's 43 drainage districts except for personnel actively engaged in flood work.
Dikes Threatened at Clatskanie
Another danger point was at Clatskanie on the lower Columbia. High tides were forcing water over dikes there and company L of the Oregon national guard was ordered from Astoria to man the Clatskanic dikes.
The Interstate bridge was closed on the Vancouver side to prevent traffic to the flooded southern shore.
Water from the Vanport flood swept a mine north to the cloverleaf intersection of Denver and Union avenues and the south end of the bridge, whirled around an underpass and headed east to join other flood currents.
R. H. Baldock, state highway engineer, said no one can tell just where the dikes would hold.
"We thought Denver avenue would hold an it didn't," he said. "We've got to play it safe and can't risk the lives of men in this flood trap."
He said more than 1000 men were fighting the flood since the water got out of hand Sunday with bursting of the Smith lake railway fill behind Vanport.
To the complete amazement of all authorities, not a single body had been reported sighted or recovered by Monday night in the Vanport wreckage.
The sudden tragedy to the war-built housing project echoed across the nation, and in Washington President Truman declared Vanport and other Northwest flood sections "disaster areas" and ordered use of surplus war property for relief and rehabilitation.
Red Cross officials took cognizance of the disaster on a national scale and allocated $250,000 for relief.
Damage in Vanport alone was estimated by officials at $21,490,000.
There were more than 100 hospital cases of injured persons, many of them with broken bones, but none critically hurt.
Elmer Fisher, weather bureau forecaster, predicted the crest of the flood in Portland and Vancouver after 6 p.m. Tuesday night.
Monday night the Willamette was 29.5 feet and is expected to reach 30.5 feet at the Tuesday crest. Columbia crests are about the same.
The crest will top the ground-level seawall along Portland's west waterfront, but is expected to be retained by the 4-foot concrete panel atop the wall.
Oregonian
Portland, Oregon
June 1, 1948
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