When those affected by the September 2004 flood born out of the last vestiges of Hurricane Ivan begin to talk about those dark days five years ago, they recall the shock, the devastation and the frustration.
But usually, they can also find something to smile about.
For Ellen McVicar, a first-grade teacher at Marietta's Harmar Elementary School, that smile comes when thinking about her late aunt, a retired teacher living at that time in the Westerville area. When she heard her niece's classroom, located in the basement of the west side school, had been filled with nearly two feet of water, she and a friend, Pam, got together a group to help.
EVAN BEVINS The Marietta Times
Harmar Elementary first-grade teacher Jean Caldwell, left, talks to a student Friday in her basement classroom. Five years ago, the room’s wall was damaged by nearly two feet of water in the building, resulting in the lower portion being removed. Until it was replaced, Caldwell covered the opening with paper to keep her students from being distracted by their peers passing in the hallway.
"Pam and my aunt Ann came down with this van-load of supplies," McVicar said.
Floodwaters entered the building through backed-up drains and came up to the bottoms of the first-graders' desks. The water sloshed into the compartments, soaking and ruining supplies like crayons, paper and painting shirts.
"The kids didn't realize we had lost everything," McVicar said. "They were reaching into their desks and there's nothing there."
The worst flood in 40 years
Five years ago Saturday, a good portion of downtown Marietta was under water.
Businesses and homes from Belpre to Macksburg were inundated by the worst flooding in 40 years. Matters were made worse by the fact that many of those hit hardest went to bed two nights earlier thinking there would be little, if any, problems.
The impact of the September 2004 flood can still be seen today - whether it's the "Ivan was here" markers on Front Street or the nearly empty town of Elba.
This edition of The Marietta Times looks back on those days and the community's efforts to rebuild and recover.
Anatomy of a disaster
More than a week earlier, the remnants of Hurricane Frances dropped nearly 4 inches of rain on the region. In Frances' wake came Hurricane Ivan, once again battering the southeastern United States.
As early as Sept. 14, the National Weather Service began issuing flood watches for the Ohio River as Ivan moved across the Gulf of Mexico.
What was left of the storm reached the Mid-Ohio Valley three days later, dumping almost 5 inches of rain. The National Weather Service predicted the Ohio River at Marietta would crest just above the 35-foot flood stage.
That afternoon, however, the forecast called for the water to crest more than a foot below flood stage. Many people breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the area had dodged a bullet.
It was 10 p.m. when the weather service issued a new forecast, this one predicting a crest at 41.5 feet.
On the morning of Sept. 18, the rain had passed, but the water kept rising, fueled by heavy rains to the north.
Water spilled over the banks of the Ohio, the strong current tearing away riverbank sediment and depositing it in homes and businesses. Nearly 1,000 structures in Washington County alone were affected, with Monroe, Morgan and Noble counties and Wood and Pleasants counties in West Virginia also battered by flooding.
When the river finally crested on Sept. 19, it reached 44.97 feet. It was the worst flooding in Marietta in 40 years.
And that was only the beginning of the story.
For a couple of days, the students shared supplies. But then McVicar's aunt and her friend arrived, bringing enough items to supply both first-grade classes and stock the school's supply room. A group from the Barlow-Vincent area also donated books, some of which McVicar still has in her classroom today.
"That's what people should do in a tragedy," McVicar said. "It would have been a real hardship for some of the families to purchase those supplies again."
The donors' actions also provided an opportunity to teach the students, McVicar said.
"I think it was a lesson learned that way too, that people were very giving toward us," she said.
Home and work
Belpre resident Barbara Griener can also see positives when she thinks back to five years ago.
She and her husband, Doug, received a "double whammy" as water filled the basement of their Blennerhassett Avenue condo and their business Turqoise Spirit, on Front Steet in Marietta.
Then it kept going.
"The river basically was coming in the front door and flowing out our back door," Griener said of the scene at Turqoise Spirit.
The shop was closed for six weeks as carpet, tile and drywall were replaced.
"We had loads of wonderful people helping us," Griener said, citing friends, family, customers and fellow church members. "We couldn't've done it by ourselves. And they also helped with our house, too."
Through that time, she said, they never thought about not reopening.
Sticking it out
Tonya Robey, co-owner of Mad Hen Primitives in Marietta, admits she did consider throwing in the towel a couple of times, and not just because of the September flood.
The building had been struck by a fire in November 2003 at its Pike Street location. A flood followed in January 2004.
"Giving up is one of the first things that goes through your head," Robey said.
The September flood helped the owners of Mad Hen decide to move to their current Front Street address.
Then the January flood hit.
Since they hadn't finished moving into their new space, a loss of inventory wasn't a problem, Robey said.
"But we did have another cleanup to go through," she said.
The support of friends and customers helped Mad Hen keep going.
"They're always right here at the door waiting to help us," Robey said.
Churches pitch in
With the water rising, churches swung into action, including First United Methodist Church in Williamstown.
"We fed a lot of people," said church secretary Kianna Anderson. "Three meals a day at the church were available."
The food, provided mainly by families from that church, as well as First Baptist and First Presbyterian in Williamstown, was also taken out to people working on the cleanup.
Anderson recalled one young family who lived near the Ohio River and lost everything. The church provided them transportation to stay with relatives in Parkersburg and other forms of support.
"We had entertainment for the kids and a safe place for them to be while other people were trying to clean and find what they could to salvage," Anderson said.
That was another key function of the church, she said - to provide a place for people "to get out of all the mud and the muck" and be able to relax, if only for a little while.
"It was such a horrible experience, but I think the community came together to make sure everyone was taken care of," Anderson said.
Back to school
Harmar Elementary also had plenty of help in getting things back at least closer to normal in the wake of the flood.
On Monday, Sept. 20, Cheryl Cook saw the school, where she had been principal since 1982, standing on "an island of green" in the receding floodwaters. Inside, she found the 23 1/2 inches of water standing in the basement.
"I just wanted to sit down and cry," Cook said. "But I didn't. I started calling."
The silver lining in that day's clouds was the response from the community, the principal said.
"The fire department from Devola came with a pump and then AEP came with a gigantic pump and workers," she said.
The Marietta City school district divided its maintenance workers between Harmar and Phillips, the other school hit by flooding.
Although most staff was kept away for health concerns, Cook insisted on helping with the cleanup. She was joined by fifth-grade teacher Todd Caltrider, who, with his wife, owns Simply Regal Cleaning Service. The Caltriders donated their time to the effort.
"The most devastating thing was thinking about all the kids' desks and all of the things you'd lost," said Caltrider as he recalled throwing away wet and muddy papers and tests students had taken. "It was heartbreaking."
Marietta schools were closed for the entire week after the flood. They reopened the next Monday.
"It was a major cooperative effort so that the following week we were clean and ready to begin," Cook said.
More work to do
Even so, repairs at Harmar went on for more than a year. Insurance money covered most of it, although there were some challenges along the way.
The lower portion of the wall between first-grade teacher Jean Caldwell's classroom and the hallway was so damaged by water it had to be replaced.
"For several months, I taught with only the top part of the wall" in place, she said.
Caldwell's students were quite curious about the legs they saw walking by their room. Often, students on the outside were none too shy about stooping to take a peak into the classroom.
So Caldwell had to improvise, using a large roll of purple paper.
"I took paper off of the roll and made a paper wall for the months that it took to get it repaired," she said.
Eventually, Caldwell's wall was replaced and the school's library, also located in the basement, was remodeled. A custodian had stacked many of the books in the library on tables before the flood, sparing many of them from the muddy waters.
Five years later
Schools reopened in a week. Most businesses reopened within a month or two. Many people were able to return to their homes eventually.
Others decided to move on, either after the September flood or when the follow-up came in January. At least then, the water didn't rise quite as high and the lessons learned four months earlier - as well as better advance warning - helped head off some problems.
Today, McVicar still uses the same desk she had in 2004. The change in its coloration about halfway up provides a physical mark of how high the water was in their classroom.
For most of her students, it's the only reminder of something that happened just a year or so after they were born.
"That's something that's kind of hard for them to fathom," McVicar said.