“Stricken Appalachia,” from the Watauga Democrat, Boone, N.C., August 3, 1916
Not in the history of North Carolina, and seldom in the
history of the country, has there occurred such loss of both property and of
life by cloudburst and flood as that which on the 15th and 16th
of July befell our beautiful and boasted Land of the Sky.
Thirty or more counties overswept; 80 or 100 lives lost in
the swollen waters; scores of railroad and county bridges swept away; hundreds
of farms robbed of their crops, and either piled deep in sand or eaten down to
the rocks; many humble homes, many lumber plants and cotton factories and grist
mills, caught and tossed like toys in the raging torrents; landslides and
washouts playing havoc with railroads and highways; towns and villages isolated
from each other and from the outside world; trains marooned for days at various
points where the floods caught them and cut them off, and thousands of summer
visitors marooned at our mountain resorts; damage done which conservative experts
place at from 10 to 15 million dollars; for once and for the first time, the
strange cry for outside help to keep at bay the wolf of want coming from the
most self-reliant and most independent of our people:--all go to show that fair
Appalachia has been stricken to the heart by this monumental disaster.
For days the rain had descended until the ground was soggy
and the brooks were flush; then more torrential became the downpour; then
cloudbursts here and there leaped down upon the headwaters along the Blue
Ridge, east and west; then dams began to burst one after another down the
streams until their accumulated waters, sometimes wall-like to the height of 10
feet or more, swept everything before them in their uncontrollable onrush; and
vast was the ruin wrought before the rivers ran down and the flood assuaged.
The Catawba, draining the largest basin of the flood area,
succored by hundreds of turbulent tributaries, and spanned by scores of dams
which gave way, rose 40 feet or more above normal and rushed seaward on such a
rampage that no bridge of steel could withstand it, no telegraph or telephone
wires were left above it, and the civilization it has supported along its banks
was driven back aghast to the overlooking hills. The same story of devastation
comes from the Yadkin river which left its ineffaceable scars in the great
county of Wilkes and wrought much more havoc as it tore its way onward. Nor is
the picture brighter in the valley of the Broad with many farms and homes laid
waste. And beyond the Blue Ridge the flooded Swannanoa and French Broad
submerged lower Asheville, put Biltmore under water, took their toll of human
life, destroyed many a fair field and paralyzed for a time the traffic of a
great region teeming with visitors from near and far.
Stricken Appalachia!
But the men of the mountains and of the rolling Piedmont are
not the men to either murmur at their misfortune or idly bemoan their fate. In
tears they have buried their dead, but in hope and with a will they have
already set their hands to the task of repairing the damage done to their
delightful land. Some of them will need and welcome the generosity extended to
them by their neighbors round about and by sympathetic friends throughout the
State; and there is talk of Federal aid in order to relieve dire distress in
certain quarters. Let the cry for help be heard and heeded until the stricken
home is rebuilt and the unfortunates among the proud and mighty people are on
their feet again.
And out of this awful experience will emerge a people bettered
by the discipline of adversity and capacitated for the rebuilding of their
neighborhoods on yet securer foundations, civic, social and religious. Let them
not forget to conserve the forests that crown the mighty hills and hold back
the destroying waters. Let those who harness the power of those swift mountain
rivers build stronger dams which will withstand the greatest pressure than can
be brou’t against them. Let the bridge builders do their work hereafter in view
of the maximum floods of 1916. Let no landowner or tenant erect his residence,
whether palace or cot, in the danger zone. And above all, let us always look
up, with gratitude for His goodness and with trust for His continued care, to
Him “who maketh the clouds his chariot,and who walketh upon the wings of the
wind.”
To our people in the stricken highlands we send a message of
mingled condolence and good cheer—the one in sympathy for their loss, the other
to hearten them in their task. The flood has receded. The rainbow of hope
overspans the desolation. A new day is shedding its eflulgence all over
Appalachia. Such prospects are before us as never stirred or impelled any
people. “God’s in His heaven; all’s well with the world!”
--From
the Biblical Recorder
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