The 1913 Flood, called “the greatest natural disaster in Ohio history,” will be the topic of a program presented by local Historian Roger Miller Monday, January 7, at MidPointe Library Middletown.
Miller will speak at 6:30 PM in the Douglas J. Bean Community Room at 125 South Broad Street. The program, part of MidPointe’s “History & Genealogy Speaker Series,” is free and open to the public. Doors will open at 6:00 PM.
Also referred to as “The Time of Terror,” the 1913 Flood not only affected Middletown and the Miami Valley. It impacted at least eleven states and a small part of Canada.
According to historical accounts compiled by the late Benjamin F. Harwitz, more than a thousand Middletown families were forced to abandon their homes, local utilities and transportation were affected and food supplies were low. “So rapid was the current that from the force of the stream hundreds of yards of asphalt paving were torn from their concrete foundations and forced through the doors of adjacent buildings,” he reported.
