ALBANY – The flood of 1925 was the high-water mark of the drenching Mother Nature could throw at Albany, Georgia. At least, that’s what people thought.
Later, as the city developed, the 1925 flooding was the measure for future levy development and flood planning.
What city leaders hadn’t planned on was Alberto.
First identified as a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa on June 18, 1994, the storm that would wreak such devastation with a “500-year flood” event became identified as Tropical Depression One of the year’s tropical storm season 10 days later. Wind shear prevented it from becoming a powerful storm, but on July 2 it became Tropical Storm Alberto and the next day it made landfall in Florida. The day after reaching landfall, Alberto weakened into a tropical depression.
As southwest Georgians celebrated the Fourth of July weekend in ‘94, the storm moved into Georgia and dumped rain, copious amounts of rain, over several days.
Nearly 28 inches fell in Americus, and other cities in the region had totals of more than 20 inches.
Alberto stalled and dumped additional water north of Albany in the Flint River basin and made a loop back into the area before heading to Alabama, where it eventually stalled and dissipated.
All of that water was then set on a course heading south. Flood waters completely inundated Montezuma and Newton and washed through parts of riverside cities from Albany to Bainbridge. Area creeks, including the Kinchafoonee and Muckalee, also crested at high levels, flooding residences and sending people fleeing the high water.
As a result of the flooding, 31 individuals lost their lives, including five in Albany.
Can you save this hospital?
As a boy, current Albany Assistant City Manager Bruce Maples was a bystander for a 1966 flood. His father drove him to the site where the Albany Civic Center now sits and farther south to Radium Springs, where he viewed the destruction.
He would have a much more active role when the Great Flood of 1994 occurred. On the Friday prior to the Monday July 4 holiday, the 34-year-old Maples became, in effect, the acting city engineer with the retirement of his boss.
“I had a two-week-old baby, then we had the worst flood of record,” Maples said. “For a while there, the flood was my whole life.”
In the engineer’s mind, there were multiple flood events: first the creeks, and then the flooding along the river that came with the large surge of water that made its way down the Flint.
One of his most vivid memories is driving to Palmyra Park Hospital, which was at risk of being inundated with water. On the way, he held his door partially open so that Georgia State Patrol troopers he met and were looking to stop drivers breaking the curfew that had been established would see the reflection from the city logo on his truck.
When he arrived, a city firetruck was pumping water away from the generator at the facility. Maples recalled standing in the water outside, and as he made his way up the steps, he was met by a delegation of officials.
“They said: ‘Can you save this hospital?’ That’s exactly what they said. There’s seven people on life support systems, and they can’t get the helicopters in.”
The engineer had two questions: Had the hospital staff closed valves of pipes and were there people and sandbags available?
“We couldn’t get sandbags; we couldn’t get people,” Maples said. “The firetruck was going underneath (the water).
“I said a long prayer. Next thing here came trucks with sandbags; here came Marines. They came out there and took off their shirts. They said ‘What do you need us to do?’”
Working in their T-shirts and fatigues, the Marines helped pile sandbags, building a ramp and berm for the firetruck.
“Long story short, we managed to keep the generator going and kept the hospital open,” Maples said.
At the time of the flood, the flood stage at the site of Veterans Park Amphitheatre was set at 20 feet, a number that has been increased since the flood by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Over the days after Alberto’s two visits, the water on the river rose and fell slightly, but when it crested it was at 44 feet at that location, Maples said.
The high water closed the city’s bridges across the river, and as the officials considered whether it could be re-opened Maples was with a group of Georgia Department of Transportation engineers who walked out on the Oglethorpe Boulevard bridge, which is a major artery for traffic crossing the Flint River.
“It was dark, and we were out there on that bridge,” Maples said. “The handrails were humming. The DOT engineer put his hand on that rail. By the time I turned around, all the DOT engineers were running. They didn’t say anything to me, they just took off running. I took off running.
“They said if a bridge gets into some kind of harmonic cycle, you get that humming. We were worried it might come down. That’s what they were worried about. They felt it vibrating, and they took off.”
The city faced accusations of diverting water into south Albany neighborhoods, but Maples said that the sheer volume of water made doing much of anything to alter its path impossible. Once the levees were breached, it was pretty much all over.
“When you’ve got 1.94 million gallons a second going down the river, there’s nothing you can do,” he said. “There is nothing you can do to divert that much water. There were some people upset, and you can understand that. We had a levy built to a 37-foot river. Everybody said the Flint River will never go above the flood of ‘25. That’s what the levy was built for.”
What stood out to Maples was the Albany community’s reaction. Volunteers filled sandbags at the Civic Center and came together to assist each other in other ways.
“They didn’t care where the sandbags were going,” he said. “Everybody was going out, feeding people. It was an amazing effort for such a bad situation. Everybody responded. It was the worst of times and some of the best of times. It was amazing. You just saw such amazing acts of kindness.”
We had to move out
A few miles south of Albany on Westview Drive near the Putney community, Cathy Dunn described her experience with the 1994 flood. Although located near the river and a smaller stream, Dunn did not think her residence, which sits on a small hill, would be affected.
She recalled that the water was “bubbling,” and across the street at her neighbor’s it was “springing out of the ground.” As the waters rose nearby, officials checked the level and eventually notified Dunn and her neighbors it was no longer safe to stay in their homes.
“One day in July, a firetruck came down checking the water,” she said. “Then they told us we needed to get out because the water was rising. We had to get out. At the time, I was married to Sam Dunn, a police officer. He was working. He couldn’t even come home to his family. That was his job, to help serve other people. We started out moving everything. They told us we had to be out by a certain time.”
The day after moving, Dunn said she tried to approach the house to see what was happening but couldn’t get down the street.
When she returned home, she found that water had indeed gone inside the structure.
Some belongings that had been moved to the attic, including mattresses, even had to be thrown out.
“The water came 4 feet inside the house,” she said. “We had to gut the whole house. The only thing left was the frame.”
About the only assistance made available was bleach and a U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, which was not adequate for the family. Dunn’s family stayed with others during the lengthy process of getting the residence suitable for habitation as she continued working her job as a UPS driver.
“We weren’t able to get a loan to build back,” she said. “It had to come out of our pocket. It left me with a whole lot of work to be done, get back in debt and trying to get things back in shape.
“We stayed with my sister-in-law for months.”
Like others who were affected by the 1994 flood, Dunn had damage again in a 1998 flood that was not as severe as the one four years earlier. Hurricane Michael also downed trees in 2018 that left her still working to get the yard’s landscaping back to her satisfaction.
“It’s still not where I want it, but I’m working on it,” she said. “Hopefully we won’t see it again. I think if I had to go through another flood, I would let it go with the flood, not building back and everything. It was hard to try to come back and start all over again.”
30 days on the other side
As a patrol officer with the Dougherty County Sheriff’s Office in 1994, sheriff’s Maj. Ken Faust was dispatched to patrol the east side, away from his family on the other side of the Flint River. After getting the news, he made a trip to his home in Terrell County before reporting for duty for the flood.
“They had told us to sandbag Albany State University,” he said. “By the time I got back, they said Albany State is gone and to go to Radium Springs. We started going to work, that Tuesday, the 5th. That’s when we started activating for the emergency, for the flood.
“I spent 30 days on the east side. We did 12-hour shifts. I would have to get clothes dropped off at the courthouse to be flown to the east side. It was an amazing experience to see what Mother Nature could do and the compassion of the community.”
During his time, Faust stayed at residents’ houses in east Albany or occasionally at a church.
“Mostly, folks put us up,” he said.
Faust patrolled to enforce the curfew and to check on properties that had been damaged.
“When water started receding, I was going out to see if it was safe for people to come back to their home,” he said.
A couple of experiences stand out for the deputy. As water was nearly at the level to cross Radium Springs Road, he recalled seeing ants that were aware of the impending danger.
“What I noticed was the ants were crawling out of the ground and getting on the mail boxes,” he said. “The mail boxes would be covered with ants. They were trying to get out of the way because they knew the water was coming.”
Maples also encountered ants at Palmyra Park Hospital as balls of them would float by in the water, sometimes biting him.
On another occasion Faust was out in a jon boat riding in the Radium Springs Park area.
“We were at Holly Drive and Radium Springs,” he said. “That stop sign is eight or 10 feet above the ground. That stop sign was underwater and one of our boat’s props hit that stop sign. It was an amazing sight.”
He also recalls the devastation. The casino at Radium Springs, which had been a gathering place for generations, was damaged in the 1994 and 1998 floods and also by a fire and was eventually demolished.
Homeowners returned to find their whole lives torn apart.
“Just .. the devastation they would come home to, especially around the Radium Springs golf course,” Faust said. “Everything they owned was gone. They had time to get some clothes on their back and a few personal possessions before they left. Everything else was destroyed. It was a sad time.”
Albany State University
The flooding left most of Albany State University’s lower campus in east Albany a ruin. But before the mud was even dry in the Catherine Hall administrative building, staff was on the job.
Andrea Felton, the university’s executive assistant to the provost and manage faculty events coordinator, was one of the first boots on the ground, literally.
“Actually, when the flood hit in July of 1994, I (had) left town that morning headed to Florida to get on a cruise ship,” she said. “When I returned a few days later, I didn’t realize what had happened. I had stopped in Tifton. I was looking at the TV in the convenience store and they said Albany State was under water.
“I called my sister-in-law. She was at my house. She had to leave because her house was on Palmyra Road.”
Much of the lower campus was inundated with flood waters. Felton and her co-workers had to return to their offices to retrieve records from Caroline Hall because the records in the building contained sensitive student information such as Social Security numbers.
Credit: Alan Mauldin
Credit: Alan Mauldin
The second floor, where she worked, had not been breached by the water, but the first floor still showed traces of mud and debris.
“They wanted us to go in,” she said. “We had hard hats, work boots and gloves and masks. We pulled out the documents and boxed them.”
Where Caroline Hall stood, there is a chimney left with a plaque commemorating the flood.
Initially there was some talk that the imminent fall semester classes would be canceled, but university officials moved quickly to continue operations, Felton said.
“We had our office set up in modular units, and that’s what we worked out of for a few years,” she said. “I think we were out of commission for two weeks and then were were in modular units. That speaks to the leadership and the fact we wanted things to go on.
“In the fall, we wanted to have classes and just go on and take care of business as usual, and that’s what we ended up doing.”
Some students chose not to return, but other than that things returned to a new normal, with some classes also moving to modular units on campus.
“Of course you’re going to have some resistance,” Felton said. “But people still came. They got an education. Everybody did their part. It was a campus full of modular units.
“Life was different. It didn’t hit all of Albany, but a lot of Albany suffered.”
Over 500 coffins
The living weren’t the only ones affected in 1994. The surging waters disturbed the resting places of the dead, with 503 bodies coming out of the ground. When the water receded, coffins containing human remains littered Riverside Cemetery; some hung from chain link fencing, while others had floated away into nearby yards and even a home.
“In 1994, we had 503 (bodies) come up,” Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler, who at the time was working as a funeral director and volunteered for the job of sorting and identifying washed-up remains, said. “We had skeletons, bones at different places. We found a coffin that washed down the street into a house.
“The funeral home where I worked had been flooded, so I volunteered. I felt my calling was to go out there and assist.”
A team worked for more than a month that summer processing the bodies and ensuring all who were recovered were returned with dignity to the earth. But 44 wound up in a watery sinkhole from which they could not be extracted safely and remain in that location.
Initially, the remains were placed in refrigerated trucks and moved to the Albany Exchange Club Fairgrounds. Later, Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany provided a space where investigators from various state agencies and retired federal specialists could do their work.
“When caskets came in, we’d put a case number on it,” Fowler said as he described the process while displaying photos on his laptop computer. “We opened all the coffins, took all the bodies out.”
Clothing was removed and preserved. The initial inspection included seeking any distinguishing physical characteristics such as birth marks, eye color, hair color or a tattoo, information that could help a loved one in identifying a body.
“(It helps) if you can find any identifying markings, tattoos, clothes, anything you can find – jewelry, body piercings,” Fowler said.
The team photographed those features for its files. Even implanted medical devices such as pacemakers or prosthetic limbs yielded vital clues.
“If they’ve got prostheses or any metal in their body, there are serial numbers on medical (devices),” Fowler said.
Among the investigators’ first task was taking fingerprints from the corpses’ hands. When those appendages were intact, the process was straightforward, but that was not always the case. When the flesh was too decomposed to allow traditional rolling of the fingers through ink, investigators cut off the top layer of skin and stretched it over their own fingers like gloves.
In the end, the investigators identified all but 97 of the 503 and workers marked each coffin with a large “K” for known or “UK” for unknown. Family members of those identified were allowed to make arrangements and others were buried back in or near the sites from which they were disinterred.
After processing was completed, Fowler said the bodies were reclothed in what they were wearing at their burial.
Those who were not identified were placed in rows at Riverside Cemetery, where they were reburied with marker stones. Each stone bears a number and the words: “Lost But Not Forgotten -- Flood of 1994.”
The case files have been preserved so that if new information becomes available, identification will be possible.
The work, performed in July and August in space that was not air-conditioned, was not pleasant. The “stench” was horrible, Fowler said, and the investigators had to gulp down food, trucked in to them on site, while fending off swarming flies that may have previously landed on human remains.
Fowler said he felt like the task was a calling. It also led to his being hired for two jobs and traveling the country and world to do similar work at places like the World Trade Center and in the wake of tsunamis in Asia.
“They knew I was not afraid of getting my hands dirty,” he said. “I had no problem assisting them.”
A family assistance center worked with residents to help identify their loved ones, the coroner said.
Being a part of the team that helped reunite those loved ones and make sure they were returned to a new grave was satisfying, he said.
“It happened again in 1998, but not as many came up,” Fowler said.
Credit: Albany Herald
Credit: Albany Herald
MEET OUR PARTNER
Today’s story comes from our partner the Albany Herald. The Albany Herald publishes in print and online at albanyherald.com, providing coverage of community news, events, and sports in Southwest Georgia.
If you have any feedback or questions about our partnerships, you can contact Senior Manager of Partnerships Nicole Williams via email at nicole.williams@ajc.com.
About the Author
