Rain, incessant, fearful, appalling rain of a weeks duration enveloping the Ohio River watershed, assembled all the destructive forces that are embodied in the word “flood” and sent them hurtling down the Ohio Valley, laying waste a fertile stretch after rain that extended from Pittsburgh to Cairo and thence down the Mississippi. The flood eclipsing the record of the 1913 deluge by five feet, caused a monetary damage that is at present inestimable and clamed many lives.

The city of Ironton was covered by the onrushing tide and only about ten per cent of the entire area was left untouched by the ochre solution and not a single person in the entire valley was left untouched by the effects of the extending catastrophe. The toll of these angry waters has not been fully levied even though the crest has been reached and recession has been noted.

In the wake of the chaotic disturbance will come the horsemen of the Apocalypse who are astride the scourges of Pestilence, Famine and Disease.

There is not a single soul in the entire reach of the Ohio Valley who could have predicted the terrific, ever rising rush of the maddened tide. Certainly none among us would of ventured to presage a stage that would exceed the 1913 forage of the mightily river, that then lad waste its fertile valleys, causing millions upon millions of dollars of damage and levying a heavy toll of lives.

The river observers had held fast to the belief that a snow deposit in the Pennsylvania and West Virginia mountain chain was necessary for a flood of major proportions in the lower Ohio. This belief and this conclusion was blasted by the forces of nature in this Year of our Lord. A drenching, driving rain that continued hour after hour, day and day and stretching on into a solid week furnished the Ohio and its tributaries with a mountainous stream of water. It rushed into every lowland section, engulfing each like a tidal wave, forcing the inhabitants into the higher and more habitable regions, laying waste their homes and ravaging their possession.

The first rush of the water was greeted by the residents of Ironton with the usual blithesome, lighthearted spirit and only when the river threatened to leave its banks did the merchants move their stocks off the floors of their establishments. Then the merchants allowed only for the stage that some unusual times, caused them inconvenience and some little loss. Not one of them were prepared for the incessantly grasping push and the number who were about to remove their goods from the path of the destructive force was almost negligible, consequently the financial loss to the city of Ironton will mount many hundreds of dollars beyond the property loss of the 1913 debacle.