By DAVID MANN
“Send a boat.”
Say those words to an older person who grew up in this part of the country and they’ll start telling flood stories, according to Rick Bell, a west Louisville native and author of “The Great Flood of 1937.” That phrase became the slogan of the flooded Ohio River Valley during that time, he explained to more than a dozen people who had come to hear him speak. Bell was one of the primary speakers at the Howard Steamboat Museum’s 15th Annual: A Victorian Chautauqua. The flood was the theme of this year’s festival, which started Saturday and carries on into this afternoon.
History buffs packed the room where Bell was speaking on Saturday afternoon as he displayed photos of the flooding. The pictures detailed the damage of those days: Shotgun-houses tipped end over end; the waterline rising above the deck of the region's bridges; and person after person sitting aboard whatever small boat or makeshift vessel they could find for safety.
Back then, people made it a point to live in close proximity to the riverfront, Bell said as he displayed the photos. Nowadays people don’t. The 1937 flood had a lot to do with that.
The water crested at 57 feet and stayed above flood stage for around 23 days, he said. An odd weather front set up in the Ohio Valley and the rain came down for days on end. “Places flooded like they had never flooded before,” he said.
