Memories still fresh of flood 40 years ago

Forty years ago this month, record-setting rainfall caused severe flash flooding in Shackelford County, killing nine Albany residents, leaving 102 families in the city and 50 more in the county homeless, damaging about 100 additional houses, washing out multiple bridges and miles of roadway, destroying hundreds of miles of fences, making the water unsafe to drink, and causing millions in property losses to area businesses and agricultural producers.

The “100 year” flood resulted from the remnants of Tropical Storm Amelia, which had drifted northward after it made landfall at Corpus Christi on July 31, then stalled out and dropped over two feet of rain in the Albany vicinity on Aug. 3-4.

During the 27-hour period ending at 7:00 a.m. on Aug. 4, 1978, a total of 29.05 inches of rain was recorded by the National Weather Service (NWS) at Albany, while Fort Griffin recorded 32 inches.

The entire Big Country had been extremely dry that summer, and the compacted soil could not absorb the torrential rainfall, causing flash flooding across a multitude of dry washes and streams that had been dry only hours before, and sent rivers thundering out of their banks.

According to the National Weather Service, the “heavy rains produced extraordinary runoff values,” and 28 inches of the rainfall in Albany occurred within one 12-hour period.

Elsa Turner wrote for The Albany News, and in her Aug. 11, 1978 “Up and Down the Street” column, she recorded her experiences.

“We enjoyed living on the North Prong of Hubbard Creek,” she said. “The drought of this summer, along with the extreme heat took its toll. The stream dried up to a mere trickle.”

She added that many were praying fervently for rain.

“At about 3:00 last Thursday morning, Aug. 3, the longed-for moisture began to fall gently,” Turner said. “By 7:00 a.m. the measurement was 1.30 inches. Everyone was jubilant!”

The rain continued – and increased.

By midafternoon the Turners had four inches in their gauge.

Flood Watch

At 4:30 p.m. the NWS announced that a current flash flood watch would be extended throughout the night “with up to four inches of new rain possible.”

Turner wrote that she was enjoying the welcome relief from the drought, and left two small windows open so she could savor the smell, taste, and feel of the rain.

“Suddenly I realized the waters were rising with an astonishing rapidity,” said Turner. “Water was churning up mud; trash and limbs came floating down. I decided we had a flood when the rise increased by 18 inches in 15 minutes.”

John Caldwell was getting ready to start his senior year at Albany High.

“We (John and his twin brother Ray) were worried about our club calves that were down near the creek,” Caldwell said. “We moved them to higher ground.”

Fort Griffin park manager Lester Galbreath recalled that he had been concerned that the heavy rain might take out a stretch of road he had just finished repairing near the camp grounds.

“I got in my pickup and drove down the road,” Galbreath said. “It was raining so hard that I couldn’t see very well. Then I saw something white whip across the road ahead of me, and at first I couldn’t figure out what it was.”

Galbreath soon realize it was a whitecap on the water from the river,  already flowing across the campground road. Rather than take a chance on losing his truck, he drove back to his home at the T.E. Jackson house.

Fifteen miles to the south, Turner noticed that the stream outside their house had become “a raging torrent.”

Flood Warning

At 8:40 p.m. on Aug. 3 the NWS issued a flash flood warning in effect until midnight for persons in Shackelford County. 

“Flash flooding was reported by the Department of Public Safety in Albany at 8:40 p.m.,” said the NWS bulletin. “Also radar indicated heavy rains in the area and they are expected to continue for about an hour.”

Caldwell recalled getting in a car with Ben Jack Riley and going out on the Breckenridge Highway. 

“We ran into high water and we couldn’t cross, so we turned back,” Caldwell said.

Turner wondered if the people who had been praying for rain were now asking the Lord to turn off the faucet?

“Trees, buildings, everything imaginable began flashing by,” wrote Turner. “After supper we tried to settle down and watch television, but the lights went out at 9:50 p.m.”

During brief flashes of lighting she and her husband continued to watch the storm and “glimpsed houses and buildings going downstream.”

In Albany, near the Cook Field Road, William Schkade was at home with his parents, Alvin and Louise, and an elderly aunt who was visiting from California.

“We saw the water rising,” Schkade said. “And then we saw a big oil tank floating down the creek and decided it was time to leave!”

The four were crowded in the pickup cab, and the motor flooded out several times, but restarted each time and they made it to higher ground to spend the rest of the night with friends.

Galbreath was still at the T.E. Jackson house.

“There was loud banging at the door, and when I answered it, there was a lady from Woodson,” Galbreath said. “She said, ‘Lester, can you help me? We drove into the river!’”

Galbreath assumed she must have driven off the road in rain and slid down the river bank, so after asking her if everyone was okay, he offered to drive them home.

“You don’t understand; you can’t get there,” she told him. “We drove into the river!”

Once she explained that their vehicle had never left the road, Galbreath understood that the river at Fort Griffin was rising quickly. 

After the Woodson group was headed to higher ground, the park manager decided he had better do the same thing as soon as he rescued his horse.

“I had a mare in a small pen by the river, and the rain was coming straight down so hard you could barely see,” Galbreath said. “I hitched up my trailer and went to get her, but the river was boiling with trees and stuff and roaring loudly right past her pen, and she was scared. She was tearing around and around that little pen, and she couldn’t see me or hear me call.”

Since he couldn’t catch his well-broke mare in the storm, Galbreath threw open the pen’s gate, in hopes that his trusted companion might be able, somehow, to get out and find high ground, and he headed for his truck. 

The next thing he knew, his horse ran full steam past him and climbed into trailer before he could get there, and relieved, he was able to drive them both up to high ground at the park’s main building.

Caldwell’s older brother Wade was at the Beehive eating dinner with a date when flood waters drove them and their friends out of the restaurant.

“They were still stuck on the other side of the creek that runs by the donut shop and Los Cazadores for a while,” said Caldwell. “It had the town cut in two. They were finally able to get across the creek by riding on a front end loader.”

The Turners remained in their house until 11:00 p.m.

“By that time we could see that the water had reached the top of the bank about 15 feet from the house,” Turner said. “We closed the door, got into the car, and drove to the Albany News office where several people were sweeping water out of the building by candlelight. The flat roof was leaking like a sieve, and water was coming through the walls at the back of the building.”

Meanwhile, Galbreath watched a pickup full of people driving down the gravel road from The Flat.

“The water was rising so fast that it flooded out the truck,” said Galbreath. “But the occupants were able to get out and make it up the hill. In a very short time the pickup was completely underwater, including the tire that was mounted on top of the cab.”

Flooded rivers turned the historic fort site into an island, and just a short distance away, the east corner of the very top was all of the old bridge that remained above water, the park manager said.

“Normally in August the campground would have been full, with around 200 or 250 people, and as quick as that river came up, they would have drowned,” Galbreath said. “For some reason, that night the campground was empty.”

Retired county judge Buddy Fincher has no doubt why so few lives were lost.

“I just praise God!” Fincher said.

He spoke about his recollections of the flood from his VA hospital room this Tuesday.

“The first memory I have of the flood is trying to drive in early that morning, and everything was shut down,” he recalled. “The nine-mile hill was closed, so I turned around and went back and got my boat, because I knew then that we would need it. When I got back to Albany, I was able to drive as far as Lacy Street.”

The water had started to recede, and the rain was letting up a little.

“Dwain Wade was the emergency manager, and the county judge is in charge of all that, so we went right to work,” Fincher said. “The rest home was full of mud from the flood water, so we squeegeed it out.”

Round Two

Then, about 4:00 a.m., the river started rising again, and it quickly rose at least as high as the first time, according to Fincher. 

The judge said the scariest thing for him was when the Parks Department came with their boats and everyone wanted to launch them right then, in the dark, in the raging waters.

“I had just finished taking an emergency planning course for judges down in Austin,” said Fincher. “At that time the Shackelford County emergency plan was 27 years old, but at the course they had shared a plan from the city of Alvin. It had been the best one submitted that year, and I just used it like it was ours.”

Fincher said he had been taught that his job was to try to keep people alive, and then take care of them afterwards.

“I had to tell Ben Jack that the boats just couldn’t handle the flooding river, with all the debris in it, in the dark,” Fincher said. “I was sure that if we tried, we would lose even more people.”

Rescue efforts that first night included six units from the DPS, nine volunteers from Dyess Air Force Base, ham radio operators from Graham, and the National Guard, along with local firemen and other volunteers.

In spite of the efforts, several people did drown that night, including Wylie L. White Jr. 50; Brenda Faye White, 23; Adam Richard Ochoa, 4 months; Varner W. Williamson, 62; Stacey Ann Cooper, 14; Loy Key, 73; Jane Key, 65; Nettie Mae Cooper, 43; and M.O. “Cobb” Mills, 64; all of Albany. And further south, in the Texas hill country, the same storm had already claimed 27 lives.

Dyess Mission

Albany graduate Art Dearing was a lieutenant Shift Commander in the 96th Security Police unit at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene in 1978.  

“I got a call from the base commander, a Colonel Weber, as I recall.” said Dearing. “He knew I was from Albany and said he had been asked if Dyess could send lights and generators to help with rescue and recovery because of the flooding. He then asked if I would lead the group of police and power production engineers to Albany, and I said I would.”

Dearing was expecting to head a simple mission.

“I remember thinking that most of Albany was way up above the creek so I did not think it could be too bad,” he said earlier this week. “That changed quickly when we pulled up beside the TxDOT yard (located where the LEC is now), and I saw that the creek, that had never left its banks when I lived there, was all the way back to the yard. I knew then it would be bad, because that creek was only a few feet wide normally, and now it was over a half mile wide and running hard.”

Dearing knew that his parents and younger brothers were okay because they lived in the Nail house, but he was worried about all the people that lived below the hill and along the creek.

“Myself, one cop, and three power production guys took one truck with very large portable lights with their own power generators,” said Dearing. “We were going to drive the truck through the flood water into town, using the lights, and we stopped along the way to pick up some firemen that were stranded on their truck about 300 yards out into the flood waters. I knew that stretch of road well, so I had no fear that we could stay on the pavement.”

Dearing added that in reflection, it may not have been the wisest idea.

“We drove out into the water and it was up to about five feet when we got the firemen,” he said. “Their gasoline powered truck had flooded out. We didn’t worry about the water with our military diesel trucks; as long as the water didn’t get into the exhaust pipes, they would run.”

However, the highway patrol soon informed them that the roadway was not as safe as Dearing had assumed. 

“They told us they thought the bridge had collapsed,” said Dearing. “So I stood on the running board of the truck, tied myself to the rearview mirrors, and talked the driver through backing up the 300 yards to dry pavement. I remember we used the highway patrolman’s flashing lights as our target.”

The Dyess crew was credited with saving the Albany volunteer firemen, but the fire truck was lost.  

“After we got out of the water, we watched the fire truck get swept downstream, and we all agreed that what we had done was really stupid and that we wouldn’t tell anyone about it,” said Dearing. 

Search and Rescue

Dearing led a search and rescue attempt down the North Prong of Hubbard Creek early on the morning of Aug. 4.

“The next day, when the water receded, all of us, about 12 folks I think, started walking down through the flood plain south and east of the bridge,” he said. “We found one lady still alive; but we also found bodies. During the body recovery phase, I did what was needed, but I did not tell the airmen with me that I knew those people we were carrying out.”

The first body they recovered was Wylie White. Jean Green was found alive. The bodies of Varner Williamson, Brenda White, and Adam Ochoa were also found that first day.

“The last one was Brenda, and she was in my brother’s class in high school,” said Dearing. “We pulled her body down from a tree and carried it about a half mile to the Baird highway.”

Dearing said that it was very depressing. 

“I was done; I just wanted to sit down and cry, but I couldn’t,” he said. “So we just headed back to town, and someone gave us a ride in the back of their truck. When we got back to town I remember the Red Cross wanted us to pay a dollar for a cup of coffee...so we went over to see Mom in the Nail house and made coffee on Dad’s camp stove.”

The Dyess team went back to Abilene that evening.

“We had been there nearly 24 hours, and all of us were quiet and fairly spent,” the lieutenant said. “Most of the airmen with me had never seen a body before, so they were also affected by the experience.”

Basic utilities in Albany were out of commission due to the flood damage.

Drinking water, sewer lines, power, roads, and telephone lines were all in need of repair.

“We didn’t have communication, so we set up at the ASCS office,” said Fincher. “I put Dewey Lamb in charge of finding out how many people we needed to help, and feeding them. What a precious man of God he was!”

Lamb and the Baptist Church fed about 500 people a day, according to Fincher.

Military helicopters delivered communication radios and men to operate them to strategic sites, including Fort Griffin, for the relay of information, according to Galbreath.

“Most of us used CB radios, and the CB chatter was so busy that sometimes you couldn’t be heard,” Galbreath said. “The service men used military radios, so they could get through.”

The helicopters also rescued stranded flood victims, including a woman who went into labor not very far from the old fort that night, but was inaccessible because of the swollen river.

“I had an RN out at headquarters that night who tried to convince me to swim my horse across the flooding river, with her (the nurse) hanging on behind me so she could get to the lady in labor, but I refused,” said Galbreath. “The mother and the baby were both okay.”

The body of Mandred “Cobb” Mills was found two weeks later by dozer operators that his sister hired to search for his remains. Mills was still in his pickup truck, which was buried under six feet of gravel about 150 yards southeast of the Highway 183 bridge.

According to records, Nettie Mae Cooper is buried in the Albany Ceme-tery.

“They never found Loy or Jane Key,” said Galbreath. “Mr. Key had just insulated his house with foam insulation, and when the flood hit, the house floated until it hit something. Gerald Petree said he figured they were probably buried in his field.”

Recovery Begins

Once communications to the hospital were restored, Fincher and his emergency management team set up shop there.

City crewmen worked on getting water and sewer systems repaired as quickly as possible.

Caldwell, his twin brother Ray, and other teenagers including Mike and Julie Cotter, Jan Matthews, Jackie Carlile, Janet Neff, Mark and Joel Viertel, Gary Estep, Beverly Shelton, Betty Lu Linahan, Sandy Awalt, Steve Boyd, Lori and Becky Wafer, Bob and Jenna Shelton, and others, helped clean out houses along the worst flooded areas.

Fincher had watched the Dyess crew rescue the local firemen and wrote up a commendation. 

“You can imagine our surprise when we were told to get together and head to Albany, where Mrs. Dyess awarded us medals for what we did during the flood!” Dearing said. “That was the first of two medals for valor I got for doing something that I afterward thought, ‘Well, that was stupid,’ and determined to tell no one.” 

Business owners and home owners evaluated their losses, which added up to the millions.

Schkade said that they did not know if their house had survived.

“We didn’t know if we’d have a house to go back to; several people didn’t,” said Schkade. “Ours had been lifted up and moved a little, but the concrete front steps and the back carport apparently kept it from drifting away. We had about 18 inches of water in the house, and three feet in the storage building.”

He and his father, Alvin, lost $20,000 to $25,000 in bees, hives, honey, and equipment.

“We lost all the hives at the house, and at one location in the country, but the hives we had at a couple other places survived,” said Schkade. “We had so much mud in the house that they brought a water truck and hosed it out the doors. After that, we still had a lot to fix.”

For at least some of the many flood survivors, heavy rains that come in late summer, especially those fueled by tropical moisture and ending a drought, are still greeted with joy, but now include a skeptical glance at the sky, the water level in the creek, and the quickest route to the nearest high ground.

A peak discharge of 103,000 cubic feet per second was recorded at the North Fork of Hubbard Creek near Albany on the downstream side of the Hwy. 180 bridge, an area that only has a drainage area of 39.3 square miles. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the unit discharge of 2,621 cubic feet per second per square mile of drainage area was one of the highest ever recorded in Texas. The flood on Aug. 4, 1978 gauge reading was 23.3 feet, compared to 21 feet in the previous records from June 10, 1940 and July 18, 1953.

Downstream, the next station on Hubbard Creek covered a much larger drainage area and had a peak discharge of 330,000 cubic feet per second. The maximum gauge height on Aug. 4, 1978 was 41.41 feet, compared to previous record on Jan. 21, 1968 of 25.10 feet.However, records have only been recorded there since 1966.

The Clear Fork of the Brazos River reached the highest ever recorded flood stage at Fort Griffin of 38.88 feet on Aug. 4, 1978, although reportedly a flood in July of 1876, before official measurements were taken, was higher.

[There are so many people who have memories of the flood, and only a small handful are included in this article. If there is enough interest, and others will share their stories, an additional article about the flood will be written during this 40th anniversary month.]