he unnumbered
dead. The flooded districts comprised practically a circle with a radius
of a mile and a half, and in no place was the water less than six feet
deep. In Main Street, in the downtown section, the water was twenty feet
deep.

The horror of the flooded district was heightened by more than a dozen
fires which could be seen in the flooded district, but out of reach of
fire fighters.

Most of the business houses and nearly all residences had occupants.
Downtown the offices were filled with men, fathers unable to get home,
and the upper floors and on some of the roofs of the residences were
helpless women and children. Hundreds of houses, substantial buildings
in the residence districts, many of them with helpless occupants, were
washed away.

The water in the Miami River began rising Monday afternoon at the rate
of six inches an hour and continued to rise throughout the night. The
first break in the levee at Dayton came at four o'clock Tuesday morning
at Stratford Avenue. This was followed by other breaks at East Second
Street and Fifth.

THE RESERVOIR BREAKS

But the severity of the flood that hit Dayton was due to the collapse of
the Loramie reservoir in Shelby County about seven o'clock on Tuesday
morning, hurling millions of gallons of water into the swollen Miami.
Rushing down the Miami Valley, the water carried everything before it
at Piqua, Troy, Sidney, Dayton, Carrollton, Miamisburg and Hamilton.

Three rivers, the Miami, Stillwater and Mad, and Wolf Creek conjoin in
the heart of Dayton. As the city, particularly North Dayton, and a north
section called Riverside, lies almost on a level with the four streams,
it is protected from high water by levees twenty-five feet high, which
guide the streams through the city from its northern to its southern
end.

[Illustration: NORTHERN PART OF DAYTON, AND WATER COURSES WHICH
OVERWHELMED THE CITY]

North Dayton is a manufacturing and residence district. Riverdale is a
residence district. In the southern part of the city, on fairly high
ground, is the great plant of the National Cash Register Company

Wolf Creek, flowing into the Miami from the northwest, early got out of
its banks and added to the flood flowing over the floors of the Williams
Street and Edgewater Avenue bridges.

Mad River, in the northern section, also got over its banks early. All
of North Dayton, save the extreme uplands, was inundated. The Miami was
more than a mile wide below