Self-Guided Tour: 14 The 1967 Flood
Twice in living memory, the American Red Cross has transformed our landmark facility into a designated sanctuary for beleaguered Grand Islanders during and after a major natural disaster. We’re talking the historic tornados in 1980 and the 1967 flood.
Our ’67 flood was not the kind of roaring, surging maelstrom that makes the TV news by sweeping homes downriver and stranding motorists atop their cars. Rather, it was a thin sheet of water that moved slowly, inexorably eastward from the rain-saturated fields far to our west, overwhelming GI’s storm drains and sanitary sewers, breaching every basement in its path, and crippling much of the city’s electric grid. It also interrupted an ambitious plan for a community Vacation Bible School in June that was set to take place in six churches and six schools.
Hundreds of families awoke to the reality of an unlivable home. They needed something to eat and a safe place to sleep. They flocked to the Pres, where the Red Cross had established its central kitchen and feeding station. One estimate says that over the next couple of weeks, as many as 600 displaced Islanders took the opportunity to “catch some badly-needed Zs” on the pews in our sanctuary or the folding cots that packed the church basement.
But impactful though it was, our response to the 1967 flood was merely a tune-up for the Night of the Seven Twisters in 1980.
