Engineer Memoirs
tornado that hit Vicksburg, and the part played by the Corps as a whole-and
specifically the station
in regard to rescue and cleaning up.
Q ..
Was there a particular reason why the station people were more involved than any other
Corps
A ..
No, not really. We just divided up the town. After the tornado occurred, I went into
town immediately and saw the mayor and offered our assistance.
Q ..
That was in December, wasn't it?
A
Yes. That night or the next morning, General
got a message from the Chief of
Engineers instructing him to take charge of the Corps' activities and to assist the city
in any way possible. Just as a matter of control, he and I agreed that the station would
be responsible for rescue and cleanup at the theater, and the other office would handle
other portions of the task. But we weren't the only ones involved. We probably had
more of our own people because the district used contractor personnel as I remember.
As I said, our principal area of activity was cleaning up the theater. Incidentally, my son
and I were at the theater together that afternoon and
about an hour before the
tornado occurred.
Q ..
Were you
with the Humphreys and Abbot report on the Mississippi that was
published in 186 l?
A
I was aware of it. However, I was more particularly familiar with the Jadwin Plan
because I had gone through the flood of 1927. I was quite familiar in a general way
with the aspects of the Jadwin Plan, which really was the plan for developing of
increased protection for the lower Mississippi following the 1927 flood. In fact, while
I was still in high school, I had worked on some of the levees in Arkansas and
Louisiana under the Vicksburg District.
Q ..
Do you have any feelings about the virtues of the plan?
Well, there were levees, but the plan also included some reservoirs on tributaries to
A
control flow. And the plan included a spillway-at least Bonnet
at that time.
There were also plans for floodways. One of these was never built because the people
in Mississippi, who had a stronger voice in Congress, decided that the way to do this
was to flood Arkansas, and the people in Arkansas didn't like it. As a result, the Eudora
floodway never came into being, partly because of the objections from the area in which
I lived. However, levees on the Mississippi side, under that plan, were higher than the
Arkansas levees. With this design, if a break or overtopping occurred, it would occur
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