Wild Water

Vanport, Ore., on the banks of the Columbia River just outside Portland, was the nation's biggest wartime housing project. It was built in nine months, housed 40,000 people in its nearly 800 structures. At war's end, though many went elsewhere, 18,700 still remained.

Last week, as the massive Columbia shouldered against its banks, surged muddily over low-lying farmland and gnawed at its retaining dikes, the people of Vanport got a warning: the Columbia was 15 feet above flood level, highest in 54 years. It might overflow. One afternoon it did. The railroad fill protecting Vanport broke suddenly, and Vanport's jerry-built structures crumpled like matchwood under 15 feet of muddy water. In the wild scramble for safety, wives were separated from husbands, mothers from children. Bewildered and shocked, survivors told of seeing "hundreds" trapped by splintering walls or crushed by floating wreckage. Men hacked at the roofs of broken buildings looking for the missing, divers probed the interiors of 800 sunken cars. At week's end, searchers had found only the bodies of two infants. Fifty-two other people were still missing.

For 120 miles along the Columbia's lower reaches, families fled their homes. Under the water's relentless weight, dikes became soggy, began to leak in small treacherous rivulets. Downstream from Portland, the dike protecting Woodland (Wash.) broke. Four days later the river cracked the Johns Dike at Clatskenie. At Portland, the backed-up waters of the Willamette River topped the retaining walls, flooded the railroad station and the airport. Trucks and bulldozers worked night & day; troops and volunteers sandbagged every damp spot.

This week, above the muddy water, the sun shone warm and bright. In the mountains warm rain and melting snows poured fresh torrents into the valleys, sent new flood peaks surging down on the Columbia's lowlands. Nearly 48,000 were homeless in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The Red Cross estimated that it would be two months before those whose homes had not been destroyed could return. Over all the stricken Northwest, 26 had lost their lives.

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