Then in May came the big onslaught. And I might refer to the area shown in red, Judge, on the map there on the easel. Excessive rains forced the Verdigris, Grand, Arkansas, White-that is the White in Arkansas St. Francis in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Wabash Rivers out of their banks and in certain areas caused unprecedented floods. I could talk for hours of these floods, and of the great damage I have just seen, of the suffering and despair-and hope to-and of the countless deeds of heroism, superhuman effort, and kindness. Some of you represent the citizens of these devastated areas and you know from first-hand accounts and from your own observations the plight of those communities so hard hit by these raging waters.

For 3 weeks or more Arkansas floodwaters have been pouring down past Muskogee, Fort Smith, Little Rock, and Pine Bluff. Towns and agricultural areas on the White River have also battled against floods from that stream, with stages approaching and sometimes exceeding all-time records. This flood broke the water line serving Fort Smith and the Army post at Camp Chaffee. At Little Rock the Big-Inch oil pipe line and the water line to Camp Robinson were broken. Thousands of troops drawn from many camps joined the Department's experienced flood fighters and local citizens in sandbagging levees and evacuating people and livestock. All Federal levees held, but many private structures failed, letting water in on hundreds of thousands of acres of farm land.

The rain appeared to stop, but only temporarily, to be followed by the deluge to drown six States under a veritable blanket of water. The first crests on the Arkansas were surpassed, by as much as 10 feet at some points, and the lower Missouri, Mississippi, Illinois, and Wabash reached heights not recorded for many decades, and in places set new all-time peaks. Railroads and highways were flooded and washed out. Industrial plants with vital war orders kept going as long as they could and then were forced to close-some for short periods, but others have lost precious days when we badly need full production. The Army ordnance works at Weldon Springs, Mo., was saved, but shut down temporarily because railroads bringing materials were under water. The Oklahoma ordnance works had to stop-and only quick emergency action forestalled serious damage and prolonged shut-down.

It will be weeks before accurate statistics are available on these floods, but without doubt they will show very large totals of land flooded, property damaged, and transportation, industry, and commerce interrupted. Already estimates are coming in which show over 3,000,000 acres flooded, tens of thousands of persons evacuated from their homes, and millions of dollars of direct property damage. All in all, the bright spot in the whole scene is that the loss of human life has been very small.

I said earlier that the authority for rescue and repair work contained in the 1941 act has been important in our flood-control work. It will be even more so in the months ahead. Our forces are already in the field estimating the needed repairs to damaged flood-control works. That work will be carried out as fast as possible in order that the former protection may be speedily restored.

There, briefly, is the story of the past year of floods. We have learned again that over a large part of our country floods can come at any time of year. We have learned that it is not safe to assume that

there are set flood seasons and that the flood hazard can be forgotten for the rest of the year. This year has shown too the large benefits that have resulted from our Federal flood-control structures. And it has demonstrated again that flood fighting is akin to war and must be directed by an organization always mobilized and ready to meet the rising waters in a fighting way.

The CHAIRMAN. General, we are glad to have your statement. The committee recalls the floods of a year ago along the Delaware and Susquehanna, floods of last fall here in Washington, along the upper Ohio early in the winter, and the more recent floods along the Missouri and in the West and Middle West. In this connection, for the information of the committee, I should like for one of your assistants there to indicate on the map here generally the territory that is covered by the recent May floods in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. If you will take the pointer there, will you answer, or would you like in this connection to give generally the rivers and along the stretches of what rivers these floods occurred?

General REYBOLD. Let us first start there with the Wabash.
The CHAIRMAN. The Wabash in Illinois and Indiana?

General REYBOLD. That is correct, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, sir.

General REYBOLD. That happens to be one area, Judge, which I did not visit. I did visit the Illinois River flood area.

The CHAIRMAN. Just show us there, for the record, where the floods were, between what points, along the main stem and tributaries of the Wabash as shown by the map there of the May floods in Illinois and Indiana.

First, your name, for the reporter.

Mr. BEARD. G. L. Beard, principal engineer, Flood Control Section, Office of the Chief of Engineers.

On the Wabash the floods extended from the vicinity of Logansport and Peru, Ind., to the mouth.

The CHAIRMAN. To the mouth of the Wabash near what point on the river?

Mr. BEARD. It enters the Ohio River about 12 miles downstream from Mount Vernon, Ind.

The CHAIRMAN. Below Louisville. All right.

Mr. BEARD. On the West Fork

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Wait a minute now. And the Wabash goes along by Terre Haute-does it-and Vincennes?

Mr. BEARD. Yes, sir; it passes both Terre Haute and Vincennes.
The CHAIRMAN. I see.

Mr. BEARD. The river also passes Mount Carmel and then flows into the Ohio River.

The CHAIRMAN. Into the Ohio River below Louisville?

Mr. BEARD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, then, the tributaries involved are what? Mr. BEARD. The White River, a tributary of the Wabash, particularly the West Fork of the White River from Indianapolis past Spencer, on down into the Wabash itself.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a tributary in Indiana. Now generally in the vicinity of Vincennes the Wabash is the boundary between Illinois and Indiana; is it not?

Mr. BEARD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And on down to its mouth. Now, what tributaries of the Wabash were involved on the right bank as you come down? Are they indicated on the map there, the names of them?

Mr. BEARD. Yes, sir; the Embarrass River in Illinois is one stream, and the Little Wabash River also lying entirely in Illinois.

The CHAIRMAN. For the record, General, are there any national flood-control projects under way or heretofore constructed by the Corps of Engineers along the Wabash and its tributaries?

General REYBOLD. We have some levees up there. They are what we call crop-season levees.

Mr. BEARD. One was overtopped, and another one was flooded, due to unusual causes. An embankment protecting one end of the levee failed, causing wash-out of the end of the levee.

The CHAIRMAN. But generally the levees and the protective works have been constructed along the Wabash by the local interests? General REYBOLD. That is correct, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Particularly, as I recall, in the vicinity of Terre Haute and Vincennes, the larger cities along the river.

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir. They are private structures, generally speaking.

The CHAIRMAN. Private or local structures?

General REYBOLD. Private structures, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, then, the next flood east of the Mississippi River was along what tributary of the Mississippi River?

Mr. BEARD. The Illinois River from above Peoria down past Havana and Beardstown, and into the Mississippi River at Grafton.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you traverse that area, General, along the Illinois?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir. I flew over that area as far as Beardstown.

The CHAIRMAN. As far as Beardstown?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That was, as I have understood you, a record flood, or almost a record flood there, sir?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir. The peak had not reached Beardstown the day I was there, and they expected something worse. It is a very fertile, highly cultivated valley.

The CHAIRMAN. Many thousands of acres of land were inundated? General REYBOLD. Yes, sir. Many of those levees-in fact, a large percentage of them-have been built by the local interests; and while they were still standing against the floodwaters and in good condition, the internal drainage waters had collected behind the levees and inundated large areas. It appeared to me, and I checked on it later, that their pumping installations were of insufficient capacity to relieve that drainage water. Instead of the main river doing the damage it was the local waters.

The CHAIRMAN. The floods along the Illinois were caused primarily by excessive rains?

General REYBOLD. Oh, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I had understood, for instance, that in Chicago there were 19 days of continuous rain, and there is no question there of diversion of lake waters or anything of that sort contributing to this flood? It is caused by rain?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir; the flood was caused by rain.

The CHAIRMAN. We will go more into detail as to the damages and the destruction involved when we take up the Illinois on the day that we are scheduled to take it up.

Now, what other streams east of the Mississippi River are involved there?

Mr. BEARD. The Kaskaskia River, which rises up in central and eastern Illinois, and flows southwesterly into the Mississippi River. The CHAIRMAN. Near what point?

Mr. BEARD. Just upstream from Chester, Ill., and about 100 miles above Cairo.

The CHAIRMAN. Cairo. Whatever improvements there are, there are generally local improvements along that stream?

Mr. BEARD. Yes, sir; most of the projects on the Kaskaskia River were built by the local people.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, those are the May flooded streams east of the Mississippi River, are they not?

Mr. BEARD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, then, give us the general course of the floods, beginning with the Arkansas and how far it went out along the Arkansas.

Mr. BEARD. The first flood on the Arkansas River extended from the lower reaches of the Canadian River into the Arkansas River and then down the full length of the Arkansas into the Mississippi River at Arkansas City.

The CHAIRMAN. And that was along and through what States?

Mr. BEARD. Eastern Oklahoma, entirely across Arkansas into the Mississippi River; also, on the White River from southern Missouri southeasterly across Arkansas into the Mississippi River.

The CHAIRMAN. How far out the Arkanas, now, did generally the floods extend? You spoke of the Canadian, a tributary. What other tributaries of the Arkansas were involved, and in what States were they located?

Mr. BEARD. In the second crest, following the second storm, the floods

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Those storms were something like 3 weeks apart, were they?

Mr. BEARD. About a week or 10 days.

The CHAIRMAN. About a week or 10 days; all right.

Mr. BEARD. The floods extended on the main stem of the Arkansas from a short distance west of Tulsa entirely downstream again to the Mississippi River; on the Verdigris River from southeastern Kansas the full length of that stream into the Arkansas River; and on the Grand River, also from southeastern Kansas the full length of the Grand River into the Arkansas River.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, now, generally along the Arkansas River and its tributaries were any levees constructed by the Corps of Engineers overtopped, General? Do you recall?

General REYBOLD. We have no Federal levees in Oklahoma. We have repaired, in many instances, however, the privately constructed levees under the existing authorities for that type of work.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, along the Arkansas and its tributaries, in addition to the levees-of course, when you say "levees," you mean

the levees beyond Fort Smith or beyond Little Rock, because you have constructed levees from Pine Bluff down to the mouth of the river. General REYBOLD. Yes, sir. We have constructed just west of Little Rock one small levee system.

The CHAIRMAN. I see.

General REYBOLD. And that held. That is the only levee that held through the whole length and breadth of that valley west of Little Rock.

The CHAIRMAN. That is between

General REYBOLD (interposing). Above Little Rock.

The CHAIRMAN. From Little Rock up the river?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And that is the only levee that the Corps of Engineers has constructed?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You have assisted in repairing other levees under section 9 or 11 of the Flood Control Act?

General REYBOLD. That is correct, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, then, what about your levees between Little Rock and the mouth of the Arkansas River. The peak of the flood is somewhere now in the vicinity of Pine Bluff, I judge.

General REYBOLD. It has passed below Pine Bluff now.

The CHAIRMAN. Pine Bluff.

General REYBOLD. We have a project for levees at several localities on the south side of the Arkansas River between Little Rock and Pine Bluff. They have never been constructed. The levees that now exist there have been built by local interests, and with one exception they all crevassed.

The CHAIRMAN. I see.

General REYBOLD. On the north side of the Arkansas River some 4 or 5 years ago a Federal project was constructed, and it withstood this flood in grand shape.

The CHAIRMAN. I see. Now, then, on the right bank, south of Pine Bluff, there is a levee, a part of the Mississippi River project, is there not?

General REYBOLD. That is part of the Mississippi River system; yes, sir; and this flood should give that system extending from there to the Mississippi River its first good test.

The CHAIRMAN. And thus far there have been no breaks?
General REYBOLD. No, sir; and there will not be.

The CHAIRMAN. What was the flood height at Little Rock compared with the previous record flood heights?

General REYBOLD. This crest was about 3 feet under the maximum of record which was reached in 1935.

The CHAIRMAN. Where along the Arkansas was the record flood height?

General REYBOLD. At Van Buren, which is near Fort Smith, they had about 4 feet more water than the flood of record.

The CHAIRMAN. What about at Fort Smith?

General REYBOLD. That is the same gage as Van Buren.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, I see. They had 4 feet above the previous record flood?

General REYBOLD. Yes, sir.