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Date: 8/14/2015
WESTFIELD – For some, it may be hard to imagine the shopping centers on East Main Street being replaced by farmland, the population of Westfield half its size and no MassPike cutting through the city.
That was life in Westfield in the 1950s, and as difficult as it may be to grasp, the challenge is amplified when 19 inches of rain water is added to the flashback.
Aug. 18 marks the 60th anniversary of the flood of 1955, a piece of local history that seems more like a distant tale of folklore than a reality with which grandparents and great grandparents were faced.
President of the Westfield Athenaeum’s Board of Directors Dr. Bob Brown has become a walking library of knowledge about the historic flood of 1955. Or as he told Reminder Publications, floods.
He said that after Hurricanes Connie and Diane hit Westfield, a smaller storm in September added six to eight inches, and another one in October dumped an additional 10 to 15 inches of rainwater.
“In essence, in 1955, there’s not one flood. There’s two big ones and two small ones,” Brown said. “Normal rainfall for the Connecticut River Valley is around 40 inches of rain a year. In 1955, Westfield got 78 inches of rain, and 40 of that came in these two days in August and October. It was a crazy situation.”
The flood that everyone knows as “the” flood came from Hurricane Diane, which arrived at Westfield on the heels of six to eight inches from Hurricane Connie. Before either made its way up the coast, Brown said the Springfield newspapers were talking of drought.
When Hurricane Connie added six to eight inches of water, residents were relieved. No drought meant the crops would be just fine.
“Unfortunately, right behind Connie was a much bigger hurricane: Diane. Diane created real problems on the North Carolina coast. It was a big and dangerous hurricane. At that time, weather and hurricane knowledge was much less than it is now – I mean we’re talking 60 years ago,” Brown said. “It was generally felt that Diane was going to come up the coast and estimates in the newspaper on the 16 of August were that it would probably bring another six to eight inches of rain to New England. Everybody said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’”
Hurricane Diane did not relieve the town’s crops; she drowned them.
It started raining on Aug. 18 and rained for 30 hours. Brown said the first time residents realized they were in trouble was when the Lake Shore Limited, a train running from Boston to Chicago, was derailed because the tracks washed out in Woronoco. It rolled onto the riverbed, and emergency responders in Westfield were unable to get to it.
“You couldn’t get through; where Tekoa Country Club is, that’s underwater by the afternoon. You couldn’t get to West Springfield because East Main Street is underwater,” he said.
About 100 buildings were destroyed in the flood and two people died. With most of downtown under water, Brown said it was two man-made problems that expedited the amount of water Westfield saw.
Westfield’s location has made it particularly prone to flooding. Downtown sits at 145 feet above sea level, in the middle of the 500 square miles of the Westfield Watershed. As you move out from the middle towards Russell, Blandford and Huntington, the towns and mountains rise to, at most, 1,500 feet above sea level.
As the rain poured down on Aug. 18, it ran down the mountains to Westfield via the Westfield River and the Little River.
Because of previous floods, the city had put dikes in place along the Westfield River.
They held for the entirety of the storm.
However, the city was doing construction at the time, adding a sewer pumping station on Meadow Street. In order to work on it, the cut holes in the dike.
“All this water came down the river, and the dike burst right there,” he said.
Without dikes on the Little River, when the water rushed in, Brown said it flooded all of the flat, tobacco land that sat where downtown is now.
The other cause of damage was a manmade fishpond with an “earthen dam” on it near the Westfield Sportsman Club. The dam was taken out when the stream flooded.
“Now, you’ve got a wall of water 20 feet high on the north side of town coming off Notre Dame Street, just about where Mestek is. It wiped out almost everything on the north side,” Brown said. “The damage was primarily because of two manmade problems – a weak dam on a small stream and a construction project that weakened the dike. Without these two things, Westfield might have gotten away without a lot of damage.”
The rain stopped on Aug. 19. The telephones were out for a week and residents were supplied water from Army tanks. The clean up process was contentious, Brown said. There were battles over favoritism in repairs and martial law was put into place.
Given the state of the city, Brown said, it was lucky. It could have been much worse. He said the flood went as quickly as it came, so damage was not as extensive as a tornado from the Midwest.
“For most people in town, there was inconvenience … but it was kind of exciting to go outside and look at the flood and take pictures of the wreckage,” he said. “Crowds of people did. In terms of its impact on most citizens of Westfield, it was fairly minor. It was an adventure.”
Though some considered it an “adventure,” Brown said if a similar storm pattern hit Westfield in present day, the problems would be far greater. With buildings and houses replacing farmland, more buildings would be damaged and more people would like be injured. He also said the only addition the city made on the Westfield River were additional dams.
“If you got such a hurricane once again, Westfield would be a disaster because nothing has changed … The damage would be much more severe,” he said. “If you get a lot of water released on the top of those mountains, downtown Westfield is where it’s going to be. It’s just a reality, and we’ve done nothing to change it.”
Despite this, Brown said there is a simple reason why nothing has changed.
“People forget. ‘Oh, it happened 60 years ago. It can’t happen here. It can’t happen again,’” he said. “What I remind people of is that it happened in 1927, 1933, 1938, 1948, 1952 and twice in 1955. We had a hurricane pattern in the Atlantic that flooded Westfield badly roughly every five years. Now, it’s been 60 years and we haven’t had hurricanes. I don’t know when the pattern is going to change again.”
Brown said he became interested in the 1955 flood when he began working to create an archive for the city, including photographs. He was introduced to a man who took extensive photographs of the city, including during the days after the flood.
“It was natural at that point in time to see all these photographs of the flood and the 60th anniversary was coming up. It just seemed natural to use the photographs,” Brown said. “I think the important parts are that the flood sort of culminated that period of floods. It can happen again, and we’re no more prepared for it today than we were then.”
Brown will be presenting a discussion and slideshow at the Westfield Athenaeum on Aug. 19 at 6:30 p.m. Registration is required for the event. The Athenaeum will also be showing “Five Feet and Rising” on Aug. 18 at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.