The Weather Notebook: Listener Question: The Flood of 1927

The Flood of 1927
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Dave Thurlow, Host

Hi, this is Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook. Author John Barry provides a remarkable account of the Great Mississippi River Flood, in his book "Rising Tide", which he tells us about here.

Fighting to save the levee outside Lakeport, AK
Library of Congress Photo
JB: "Well the focus is the greatest flood and really the greatest natural disaster in American history. In 1927, the Mississippi River and its tributaries flooded the homes of nearly one million people, that was almost one percent of the entire population of the country. The book's really about how the flood happened, but even more importantly the repercussions of the flood and the changes that it made in the society. Not only in the South, but nationally.

Mr. Barry cites the political wrangling around the management and the failure of the massive flood control project, as impacts on things like northward black migration, the New Deal, the election of Herbert Hoover, and the destruction of the New Orleans economy. But ultimately, it was the bad engineering that killed so many people.

JB:"Well, prior to the '27 flood, the Core of Engineers decided that they would use what was called the 'levies only' policy and that meant exactly that. There would be no reservoirs. No spillways, no outlets, no cutoffs. They actually wanted to put more water into the river rather than less and it was a ridiculous policy frankly and it had been severely criticized for nearly half a century."

Projects like this with the far reaching goal of harnessing the weather, also can lay groundwork for political, social and environmental disaster. John Barry spoke with us from his home in New Orleans. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive, with funding provided by the National Science Foundation.