When Barbara Vaughn was just 9 years old, her family had to evacuate their home on Plymouth Road as rapidly rising flood waters rushed toward it.
On March 19, 1973 — 50 years ago this month — neighbors frantically banged on doors to help each other escape the daunting waters, and Vaughn, her parents and about six or seven of her 14 siblings fled in boats to their aunt’s house, which was located in the same area that is now the Lowndes County Soccer Complex. However, the flood quickly forced the family to separate from there to various relatives’ homes for the next two weeks.
“We could only get the bare necessities, which was basically a change of clothes,” Vaughn recalled. “… The family was split up for at least two weeks. Once the water did go down, once we could go home, everything was lost. When I say everything, the water got halfway to the ceiling. The inside of the house smelled like a swamp, and the wooden floors were just so buckled. The walls were just drenched in water — you could just touch it, and it would disintegrate.”
Vaughn’s family home was just one of the roughly 2,500 homes and businesses damaged from the flood that ravaged Columbus mid-March 1973.
Flood water from the Tombigbee River reached a record high of 42.23 feet on March 19. Despite its high crest, there was no loss of human life, but damages amounted to about $25 million, which would roughly equal $174 million today.
“Those were some times that I wouldn’t trade for the world,” Vaughn said, despite the harrowing experience. “… Those tragedies made (our family) even closer. That flood was a tragedy. We all lost some, but we also gained some. We as a family stuck together, and that flood didn’t just happen to us. It happened to the whole neighborhood, and if one neighbor got a good meal, we all ate.”
Leigh Mall, which had just opened earlier that year, found its halls and stores submerged in about 34 inches of water. The Dispatch reported that when the water started receding — just two days after the flood’s crest — shop owners and employees began clean-up.
While Reed’s didn’t open at Leigh Mall until November 1973, former owner of Reed’s in Columbus Lex Jackson said he recalls stories of other shop owners he befriended whose stores were impacted.
“I have a good friend who owned the store ‘Gentleman’s Quarter,’ and they hadn’t been open long,” Jackson said. “The night before they worried about it enough they started lifting everything up two feet or so. Of course, everyone thought if you got water in, it would be an inch or two. No one ever dreamed that it would ever be the height it ended up being. … I remember people telling me they had to use John boats or canoes just to get to the mall.”
Clean-up began and local residents and business owners could apply for federal and state aid. Groups like the Salvation Army and Red Cross helped where needed. Vaughn recalls getting her meals from the Salvation Army truck that would roll through her neighborhood.
“Once we were able to go back, I do remember the Salvation Army truck coming and bringing donuts and sandwiches, coffee and water,” Vaughn said. “It would come twice a day. … That was the flood of all floods.”
Vaughn’s sister, Jean McKnight, was 22 years old during the flood, and she and her husband owned a trailer they lived in. She said they lost everything, and because of the federal and state aid they received, they purchased another trailer but moved to another side of town and eventually built a home in New Hope.
McKnight said for three months, the family used money from the Red Cross to buy food and cleaning supplies.
“I was working, and my husband was too, so we had good jobs,” McKnight said. “We got help from Red Cross, and we got help from another organization like (the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration). It wasn’t called FEMA at the time.”
The old Tombigbee River, with its crooks and varied widths, could not manage flood waters well, which may be one reason past floods were so devastating, The Dispatch reported in its 20th Century special edition.
Though the purpose of the John C. Stennis Lock and Dam was to aid barge navigation, Vaughn and McKnight noted since its completion in 1980, the floods haven’t been as severe.
“Flooding always happened around the same time of the year, and we expected that,” Vaughn said. “When they built the lock and dam, it still flooded, but it wasn’t as bad. So we no longer had to live with that fear of big floods.”
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