Word: susquehanna
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Eight-Foot Wave. Hardest hit by far was Pennsylvania, where rampaging rivers slashed through dikes, destroying factories, homes, shops and theaters. In Wilkes-Barre, thousands of volunteer dike-builders worked frantically to stem the surging Susquehanna-to no avail. When the river burst the sandbagged levee, an eight-foot wave surged through Wilkes-Barre's central business district. "My God," a volunteer wept, "we just couldn't do it." Finally, the water receded, leaving a three-inch layer of sour-smelling muck on everything it touched...
...floodwaters were most savage in Wilkes-Barre because the town lies at the bottom of a bowl-like depression surrounded by high ridges. The main street of the city is normally about level with the river and only enormous grass-covered 20-foot dikes separate the Susquehanna from the business district. Driving down "Five-Mile Hill" on the main road into Wilkes-Barre one can easily see how a rescue worker from Scranton could say, "It's just a hole...
...week after the Susquehanna had breached the dikes and roared through Wilkes-Barre, the waters receded from the downtown area enough to permit people to re-enter the city and begin the clean-up. Those who were able to return to their homes and businesses found a scene of devastation unlike anything Americans--unfazed by two World Wars--are accustomed...
...short, wrinkled woman with faded blonde hair who is wearing a mud-spattered white raincoat walks along the sidewalk of the Memorial Bridge above the recently-receded waters of the Susquehanna. She is walking on broken white high heels, swaying awkwardly with each step. "I haven't got anything," she shouts to a passerby, "do you?" She walks on talking in a strained voice: "Well, we're safe and sound at my sister's and it's very nice but my aunt and I we both got it to the second floor and I had to wait in the attic...
...hardest-hit areas were the southern tier of New York, Pennsylvania and the Virginia coast. Dikes broke in Richmond, flooding 200 blocks of the central city. Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, was virtually cut off by the floodwaters from the Susquehanna, where the river flow was put at 550 billion gallons a day-the highest in nearly two centuries of record keeping. Governor Milton Shapp's $2.4 million executive mansion was flooded to its first-floor ceiling. Electric power failed; hospitals resorted to emergency generators. With roads, railways and the air port under water, President Nixon chose the only...