A Case Study:

1. The Great Flood of August 19th 1955 A Case Study: Jessica Pain & Chelsey Rohm

2. Floods • Is on overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. (A Wikipedia Definition). • Thousands of floods occur each year, at marginally different scales. • Many to all cause damages of some sort • Floods occur all throughout the United States. • There are different types of floods • Coastal, caused by sever sea storms or by another hazard, including storm surges • Riverine have fast and slow kinds, and caused by rainfall, both sudden and slow buildups of water level and saturation.

3. What Happened • Connecticut was declared to be “the hardest hit victim of the worst flood in the history of the eastern United States” (Nov. 3, 1955 Connecticut Flood Recovery Committee). • Two hurricanes, Connie and Diane dropped a total of up to 20 inches of rain over the course of 6 days • The most damages occurred along the Mad and Still Rivers in Winsted, the Naugatuck, the Farmington, and the Quinebaug in the Putnam-Killingly region. • Many flood victims had only minutes to evacuate their homes, some being woken up and told they had to leave now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X7IVZSzNHo

4. Hurricane Connie • Started off as a tropical wave, progressed into a tropical storm, and then became a Category 4 hurricane, with winds reaching up to 145 mph. • Formed August 3rd, 1955 and dissipated August 15th, 1955. • Alone, would not have caused much damage. • It was followed by Hurricane Diane.

5. Hurricane Diane • Formed August 7th, 1955, and dissipated August 20th, 1955, came to the coast as a category 3 hurricane with winds reaching up to 120 mph, • Became a major hurricane on the 12th • Was so devastating because of the rain that Connie had dumped on Connecticut only 5 days earlier

6. what the 1955 floods cost Connecticut according to Governor Ribicoff: • 91 persons dead and 12 others missing and presumed dead. • 86,000 persons unemployed. • More than 1,100 families left homeless. • Another 2,300 families were at least temporarily without shelter. • Nearly 20,000 families suffered flood damage. • Sixty-seven of 169 towns were affected by the floods. • The damage to individual property, to business, to industry, and to State and municipal facilities has been estimated at almost half a billion dollars. (That’s $4,043,998,764.04 in 2010 money with an annual inflation of 3.87%)

7. Woodland, WA 98674 • Woodland has suffered from many floods since it was founded in 1906. • In 1996, Woodland and the Cowlitz County was declared as a National Emergancy, as flooding had breached the dike that had been built to prevent flooding. • There have been many other floods in Woodland, most well know might be the floods that devestated the HuldaKleger lilac gardens, which is now a historical site.

8. Works Cited The Connecticut Floods of 1955: A Fifty-Year Perspective, Connecticut Library, http://www.cslib.org/flood1955.htm Hurricane History (Section Hurricanes Connie and Diane 1955), National Hurricane Center, Multiple Authors, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml#connie $ Dollar Times, HB Brothers http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm