PEORIA MAGAZINE June 2022

P E O R I A R E T R O

‘THE MOST TRAGIC NIGHT’ OF EAST PEORIA’S EXISTENCE Cataclysmic flood had local leaders vowing, ‘Never again’

BY MIKE BAILEY PHOTOS COURTESY OF FONDULAC DISTRICT LIBRARY, BY MIKE BAILEY

T he rain began to fall at about noon almost 95 years ago to the day — May 18, 1927. The ground was already saturated from the precipitation of the day before. Over the next six hours, 5.5 inches of rain would land on central lllinois – reportedly double that in some spots – from a storm 15 miles wide and 75 miles long. Some 500 million cubic feet of water from 55 square miles of watershed would empty into Farm Creek, which overran its banks. As the water rose, the current would reach a speed three times that of the lllinois River, fed by that same Farm Creek. In downtown East Peoria, they heard the f lash f lood coming before they actually saw it. Claude Hinton was among the first. He jumped in his car and drove down Washington Street, then Center, then Edmund, trying to warn his neighbors. “Flood, flood!” he shouted. Few paid any heed. The water

before the flood, tearing out three bridges, flooding the city three feet deep at the four corners and 20 feet deep near Edmund Street …” East Peoria’s City Hall collapsed. Local residents took refuge on their roofs, including 27 schoolchildren who spent four hours atop one until rescue personnel could reach them. Some 400 homes had to be evacuated, and 300 vehicles were swept away. There were differing reports regarding casualties, but ultimately an unidentified baby was discovered lifeless after the waters receded, and 66-year-old George Mariner was electrocuted when a boat he was riding in was driven by a wave into a live wire. As for East Peoria, the flood produced the “most tragic night of its existence,” according to the newspaper account. The city would be “scarred for years.” While it was a far cry from Penn sylvania’s historic Johnstown flood that would take the lives of more than

would never reach the top of the levees and they would hold. They always had. Eldon Kauffman, writing for the Peoria Morning Star, put it this way: “A six to 15 foot wall of ravaging, tearing, coffee-brown water gathered in tiny, tame little Farm Creek from the spewing hillsides and like an invading horde of savages destroyed… everything in its path. “Tons and tons of debris – trees, buildings, dead animals – gathered

48 JUNE 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE