We’ve been looking occasionally at the worst disasters to strike Steuben County… the worst fire, the worst road wreck, the worst railroad crash. Judging by loss of lives, Steuben County’s worst flood lies well within living memory. This is, of course… and unsurprisingly… the 1972 “Hurricane Agnes” flood.
*This storm had already killed over a hundred people in the U.S., plus many more in the Caribbean. A tropical storm by the time it hit New York state, it no longer had its intense winds once it arrived in the Finger Lakes, but it still had rain, and it rained… heavily… for days. In the early morning hours of June 23, the rivers and streams exploded from their beds. One man had already been killed in Bath, but a staggering 18 people died in the Corning-Gang Mills-Painted Post area.
*That was by far most of the 24 dead in New York state – two of the remainder died just over the county line, in the Almond area. And those numbers don’t even include three men killed immediately afterward as they were doing an aerial survey of damage for the Army Corps of Engineers. Their helicopter struck power liners and crashed into Hornell’s Crosby Creek.
*And, of course, there was also catastrophic damage; Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, touring the region afterward, said, “Conditions are worse than anything I have seen anywhere.” President Nixon had gone to Pittsburgh, another one of far too many disaster areas.
*The whole Chemung River corridor… Gang Mills, Painted Post, Big Flats, Horseheads, Elmira… was a wreck. So was the whole Susquehanna corridor… Binghamton, Endicott, Johnson City, Owego, down to Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and all the way to Chesapeake Bay. Even off those main river routes, every single community suffered.
*Two Corning radio stations joined forces… one had lost its transmitter, the other its studio. The Leader and the Star-Gazette brought out a joint edition by mimeograph. No cell phones or Internet back then, and some families spent a week trying to find each other. Utility lines and pipes were ripped to shreds. This storm finally killed the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad, along with the short line that ran between Penn Yan and Dresden, the route of today’s Keuka Outlet Trail.
*Corning Hospital was flooded; patients were laid in the backs of station wagons and taken to Montour Falls. St. Luke’s was flooded, and patients crowded into Arnot-Ogden. Theoretically ambulatory patients there were told to clear out and just walk home.
*I don’t have figures to say for sure what the next worst flood death toll was for Steuben County, but the July 1935 flood was arguably worse overall, taking 44 lives in the Finger Lakes. Former Governor Roosevelt’s New Deal immediately started flood control projects – Arkport dam, Almond dam, C.C.C. drainage and erosion projects, new dikes for Corning, Avoca, and Addison. As bad as 1972 was, without these projects it would have been far, far worse.