DISASTERS: The Violent, Deadly Swath of Agnes

THE most ravaging storm in U.S. history started as a tiny blip on radar screens, a knot of tropical air masses forming near the island of Cozumel in the Gulf of Mexico, a few miles east of the Yucatan peninsula. Quickly, awesomely, it built into the first hurricane of the year, christened Agnes, a turbulent mass 250 miles in diameter drawing unusually heavy amounts of moisture from the sea below.

First Agnes crashed through Florida and Cuba and seemed about to peter out as it moved inland. But then it turned out to sea off Virginia, recharged its depleted energies and slammed back onto the northeast mainland, already saturated by a week of nearly incessant rains. By the weekend, at least 96 people were dead and more than 120,000 had been evacuated. Five states—Florida, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia—had been declared disaster areas, and damage estimates ran into the billions. Robert M. White, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, pronounced the flooding produced by Agnes “the most extensive in the country’s history.”

The 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 quick way to get there on his inspection tour of the damage: he helicoptered in from Camp David, Md., after a flying survey of flood damage in Maryland, Virginia and other areas in Pennsylvania.

Officials closed 64 miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to traffic. Roadbed washouts crippled rail traffic around Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. The Potomac crested in Washington at 6 ft. above flood level, the highest in 36 years; the Kennedy Center approaches were inundated, and Army engineers packed protective sandbags near the Washington Monument. At Corning, N.Y., all of the Corning Glass Works facilities were under water; nearby in Elmira, 20 ft. of water lapped at buildings in the downtown business district.

Heroism. Time after time people were swept away by the floodwaters while others could only stand by and watch helplessly. Thomas Girvin, 20, held his date, Mary Katherine McCardle, above water as long as he could after a wave hit their car in Columbia, Md.; finally she panicked and then disappeared into the water. Girvin was washed half a mile downstream before the current fetched him up against a tree. Carlotta Shelton of Baltimore could not unfasten all the seat belts in her car quickly enough; she was carried away by the floods and survived, but her three trapped children drowned in the auto. As always in a great disaster, however, tragedy was remitted by heroism. Said Bob McNamara, a West Pittston, Pa., insurance broker: “Everyone was pitching in. The kids, especially, were tremendous. These dikes gave way, and in the middle of the night here are a thousand kids shoveling mounds of sand. These kids really jeopardized their lives. But they held the damn river back for three hours and gave people a chance to get out.”

Oddly, Agnes was not the only flood news in a grim week of troubles around the globe (see THE WORLD). Irrigation canals overflowed around Phoenix, Ariz., drenching desert land that is normally parched. A hastily built earthen dike gave way in Isleton, Calif., which is on Andrus Island in the Sacramento delta, forcing the evacuation of 1,400 people. Near by, a 100-yd. levee break drove several hundred people in the area near Rio Vista to high ground. And in Rapid City, S.D., where floodwaters killed 226 early in June, Charles Childs, head of the missing persons office, reported that the list of those unaccounted for, which initially included about 4,500 names, is now down to 124.