Makeshift morgues were set up in Corning and Painted Post. Outside, people whispered. “There are fifty bodies in there… sixty… a hundred….”

*Nothing even close. But the reality was bad enough.

*The first local death in the 1972 flood took place when a man was swept away in Bath. The second death came downstream in Gang Mills, where a firefighter was searching for the body.

*Hurricane Agnes had already caused a hundred deaths from Cuba to Pennsylvania, and two more would die in Canada. The official New York state death toll was 24.

*The firefighter was the first of 18 in the Gang Mills-Painted Post-Riverside-Corning-South Corning stretch. A father and daughter died in Allegany County, right on the line with Steuben. Add in the single Bath death, and 21 of the 24 New York fatalities came in (or on the edge of) Steuben County.

*And the count of 24 does NOT include three men killed a day or two later in Hornell, when their helicopter crashed as they conducted a damage survey for the Army Corps of Engineers.

*It’s a wonder the toll wasn’t higher, given the fact that in the Corning area, the rivers burst their banks unexpectedly, in the early morning hours, meaning that many residents were taken by surprise.

*Then there were those who were already in distress. A doctor in Corning Hospital performed emergency surgery by flashlight while standing knee-deep in cold, filthy water. The hospital telephoned people with station wagons and begged them to come in. Each one laid a patient out in the car’s flatbed and drove them to another hospital – often, the one in Montour Falls. Amazingly, they didn’t lose a single patient, but in some cases families couldn’t find them for days.

*St. Joseph’s Hospital in Elmira, although flooded, was able to rush patients to nearby Arnot, where they lined the halls on gurneys. One young woman, who had had surgery in Arnot the day after her high school graduation, was bustled out of the hospital by a nurse who told her she had to get out, so they could use the space. With no one expecting her, and no phones working, she struggled several miles home on foot, then collapsed.

*Although this was certainly Steuben County’s worst flood in terms of deaths, the overall death toll was far worse in the flood of 1935, when 44 were killed, mostly in the Finger Lakes. (More about that in a couple of weeks.)

*President Roosevelt’s New Deal administration got very busy after 1935, putting in dikes and other flood control measures, such as the Arkport Dam. Believe it or not, without those improvements 1972 would have been far, far worse. But, as we said back at the beginning of this blog, the reality was bad enough.