John
Morris
set up immediately in public buildings around Wilkes-Barre. The district engineer was
announced and became the center for activities, relieving Prentiss. The activation order
indicated that the district would be deactivated when the problem had subsided.
There's no need to go into all the ramifications of what we did in conjunction with Agnes
except to highlight some lessons learned that are still proving to be quite valuable.
First off, we needed to understand that the flooding problem in Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre, and
in that stretch of the Susquehanna River was aggravated because of subsidence of levees
which had been built over coal mines; therefore, the levees were not as high as when built.
That was point one.
Point two was that the levees were built before the dams that stored the excess water were in
place, therefore the levees, even had they been at the proper design height, would have been
overtopped. So it was pretty clear that the levees gave the people a false sense of security.
A policy review reaffirmed that if you're going to put in a levee system, you better put the
upstream control structures in at the same time or first. Of course, those dams were built
immediately after Agnes.
We acquired trailers and built trailer communities for the people who'd been displaced. That
was a big project and a lot of money went into it. This priority work began at once while we
were starting to do the cleanup work for which contracts were issued promptly and
expeditiously.
We built several large trailer communities, and they were fine except the residents did not
know each other. Also, the post office didn't know how to find them. Further, there were no
stores around, so we generated a community with no support structure. The American people
proved rather versatile and were able to cope with these disadvantages.
In time we proposed, as an alternate, to give the people a limited amount of money to fix their
own houses. The Office of Emergency Preparedness had to approve this plan.
A related idea was to erect trailers in people's back yards when possible so they could live in
these trailers while their homes were repaired, et cetera. Those were relatively important
changes. In some cases we probably couldn't have put the trailers in the back yard because
the yards were full of mud, trees, junk, and everything, and some of the houses were just
terrible inside.
Another invaluable action was the frequent visits by key personnel to families and to see what
was happening. General Clarke was there several times. I was there even more often, and
General Groves more than me.
I'll never forget, we went into one house where the first floor was covered with mud, and the
lady came out and threw her arms around General Clarke and said, "I'm so glad to meet you,
we were in such terrible shape, but your people came and moved us upstairs. My husband had
had a heart attack, and he's now in bed." It was really a sad story. So nothing would do but
she wanted General Clarke to go up and see her husband so he could thank us for what had
been done.
So Agnes was an abrupt indoctrination into the hazards of the Civil Works Directorate. I know
the Corps received some criticism, but when you think back through the reaction and the
Corps' response to human problems, you have to be proud. You wonder if the new system is
any better.