SOUTH FLORIDA WAS beginning to look like the Mojave Desert. In the Everglades, muck caught fire and blazed out of control, darkening the skies along the coast. Salt water moved inland through drainage canals and the underlying rock, threatening the precious drinking water of South Floridians.
Throughout much of 1944 and 1945, citrus growers and cattlemen looked at the skies and wondered: Will it ever rain again?
But by September 1947, they were asking: Will the rain ever stop?
That year, some 100 inches of rain fell on South Florida, more than tripling the region’s total rainfall for 1945 and ending one of the worst droughts in Florida history. In a few weeks the rain had drenched farmland and filled lakes and canals.
Then, in the space of just 25 days, two hurricanes and a tropical disturbance dumped enough water on an already-saturated area to inspire the return of Noah and his Ark.
When the sun finally broke through again in November, it shone down on an inland sea — 5 million acres of water stretching from Lake Okeechobee across the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp to Broward and Dade counties.
Ninety percent of eastern Florida, from Orlando to the Keys, was under water. In Davie, with its vast acreage in citrus groves and cattle lands, the water was waist-deep, and in Fort Lauderdale, waves were washing across Las Olas Boulevard. Weary horses and cattle stood forlornly on levees in western Broward and Palm Beach counties, sharing what little high ground remained with deer, wildcats, raccoons and rattlesnakes.
People whose property was threatened by water backed up by dams and locks attempted to dynamite them, but were faced down by people packing guns to guard the dams that were holding back the waters from their homes and farms.
In a primitive struggle for survival, neighbor confronted neighbor.
The Great Flood of 1947 started on March 1 when a squall line dumped a welcome six inches of water on the parched agricultural lands of the upper Everglades. Rain was plentiful in April and May, and then in June became so heavy that chairman Dewey Hilsabeck called an emergency meeting of the Everglades Drainage District (EDD), which had jurisdiction over a vast network of drainage canals, dams, levees, locks, water-control structures and hurricane gates.
By opening the hurricane gates at Lake Okeechobee, for example, the EDD could drain excess water from the upper Glades into the lake, purposely kept low for just such an emergency.
But when the torrential rains came in 1947, the EDD was starved for funds to pursue its flood control program, and chief engineer Lamar Johnson was a worried man when he learned that a hurricane had formed on Sept. 9 in the Atlantic. Slowly the hurricane worked its way across the Caribbean, battering Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and then took direct aim at Florida.
Suddenly the huge storm swerved north, and South Florida breathed a sigh of relief. Out of the blue, however, the hurricane turned, came back, and on Sept. 17 smashed into the mainland. Its winds were clocked at 155 miles per hour at the Hillsboro Lighthouse.
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, ALL hell broke loose. In Fort Lauderdale, the New River overflowed its banks, and white-caps broke over downtown, flooding luxury homes on the finger isles. Salt water destroyed Dania’s tomato crop and rain water drowned the orange groves of Davie and the beanfields of Pompano Beach. Migrant workers near Lake Okeechobee were evacuated to higher ground.
In West Palm Beach the National Guard was called out, and President Harry Truman declared a state of emergency.
Especially ominous was the head of water pouring into Lake Okeechobee from the Kissimmee River Valley. Because the lake was already full, the water had just one place to go — south to Fort Lauderdale and Miami through swollen canals.
Fears were especially high at Belle Glade, on Okeechobee’s south shore, which was under water. A hurricane tidal wave had drowned nearly 2,000 people in the area in 1928, a tragedy still horrifyingly vivid to many living on the lakeside.
Already, farm dikes near the lake were crumbling. The levee at one farm collapsed completely, flooding 3,000 acres of beans and celery.
To help drain water on the lake’s south shore, boards were removed from the South Bay locks. The released water then roared south down the North New River Canal, which would shortly deliver it to Davie.
That night a small group of men crept in and restored the boards. The Palm Beach County sheriff called them “vigilantes,” assuming they came from Davie. The district removed the boards, but again the vigilantes replaced them.
“Somebody out there might get shot,” the sheriff warned.
In Davie, things were already in bad shape. A local cattleman had asked the courts for an injunction to block the closing of a dike west of town because, though the closed dike would help citrus groves to the east, it would continue to flood his land.
This was the heart of the problem. Relief for the cattlemen meant disaster for the grove owners, and vice versa.
No quick solution was in sight — and then, unbelievably, things got worse.
A small tropical disturbance hit South Florida on Sept. 28, dropping seven inches of rain in a 24-hour period. Abnormally high tides backed up the water into rivers and canals.
“Fifty miles of water from the Everglades is moving this way,” Sheriff Walter Clark warned a terrified Broward County, as he deputized armed guards to protect county dikes.
Water began pouring into Pompano Beach, flooding the section of town near Hammondville Road. And by Oct. 2, people were being evacuated from their flooded homes in Davie to the Naval Air Station at the Fort Lauderdale airport.
People still living in Davie listened in dismay to reports of a head of water, now 60 miles long, pushing its way south from the upper Glades.
Only one thing worked in their favor: A temporary dam near the State Road 84 bridge had been hurriedly thrown up by the Army Corps of Engineers. This would ease the problem somewhat — or so everyone thought.
But as the water began to drop in Davie, it began to rise in Hacienda Flores, a development to the east. Hacienda developers asked the Corps of Engineers for permission to dynamite the new dam, and when the Corps refused, developer P.C. Collier called for a meeting of residents.
“If nothing has been done by meeting time,” said Collier ominously, “we’ll remove the dam by whatever means are necessary.”
“No one is going to blow up the dam,” retorted Sheriff Clark, trying to maintain calm. “If the dam should be removed, it will be done in an orderly manner and under the proper supervision.”
CONFLICT AND CONFUSION WERE DEveloping everywhere.
Policy changes moved as swiftly as the flood currents. One day after approving the highway department’s request to open the locks, the Broward Drainage District asked the state to close them again.
Just as quickly, the district reversed itself on the State Road 84 dam. Board members met at the dam in the rain and were greeted by 200 people carrying shovels and shouting, “Blow it up!” The board promptly voted to open the dam.
Later, P.C. Collier reported that the waters in his groves had dropped 11 inches in 12 hours. In Davie, however, water rose eight inches in the same period. Citrus man Harry Earle estimated that 700,000 trees had been lost in the flood.
People began consoling themselves with the thought that the situation could not possibly get worse.
They were wrong.
On Oct. 10, a headline in the Fort Lauderdale Daily News read: “Storm Develops Off Coast. New Tropical Storm 500 Miles From Miami.”
On the morning of Oct. 11, more thunderstorms greeted South Florida, but to Broward residents already numbed by the incessant rain it just seemed like more of the same.
That night many people went to movie theaters in downtown Fort Lauderdale to forget their troubles. Then, sometime around dusk, the storm suddenly blossomed into a small but intense hurricane with winds of 100 mph.
As moviegoers left the theaters they found themselves wading through rising water that was flooding the lobbies. Mannequins could be seen floating inside department stores.
As much as 15 inches fell on Fort Lauderdale that night. In some parts of Broward flood waters stood eight feet deep. In downtown Miami, the water was almost four feet deep on Flagler Street.
BY MONDAY, DAVIE WAS VIRTUally uninhabited. State Road 84 and West Dixie Highway were under water. Game warden J.R. Giddens, who had struggled vainly to keep hunters from shooting the deer that had taken refuge on the levees west of Davie, said the water was six feet deep in his home on West Dixie. Water was inches from the eaves of new houses in Hacienda Flores.
“Broward County from the air today is one vast lake which stretches from a point a few miles west of the ocean for the full 45 miles westward to Collier County, where the lake continues,” read one newspaper story. “The flood stretches from Hialeah on the south northward to the Conners Highway and beyond in Palm Beach County.”
Tempers were rising even faster than the water. When the Fort Lauderdale City Commission ordered the use of dynamite to open the “old” Fort Lauderdale inlet, the Fort Lauderdale Daily News lashed out at “the stupidity of (our) city leaders,” who, it said, had procrastinated for 48 hours before deciding to ignore protests by the wealthy property owners on Harbor Beach. Downtown was blockaded 24 hours too late, charged the paper, which encouraged voters to “call on new leaders.”
One day after the inlet was blasted open, however, incoming tides refilled it with sand. This didn’t prevent Fort Lauderdale voters from turning out in record numbers to bounce the mayor and three commissioners from office.
Even less popular was EDD chief engineer Lamar Johnson. A Broward Sheriff’s deputy found a man armed with a rifle, hiding behind some sandbags at a canal. The man was waiting to shoot Johnson, who was due to arrive shortly.
FINALLY, IN NOVEMBER, THE rains ended and the waters began to recede. But the controversy over the opening and closing of dikes and dams persisted, and a Broward grand jury was hastily formed to investigate the matter.
Hamilton Forman, a powerful Broward dairyman who had suffered considerable losses due to the flooding, charged in a carefully-documented statement that 50-75 percent of the damage in Davie and virtually all the damage in Fort Lauderdale had been caused by EDD policies.
On March 24, 1948, EDD chairman Dewey Hilsabeck and chief engineer Lamar Johnson were hauled before the grand jury.
Johnson, describing himself as the “favorite whipping boy of Broward County,” later wrote:
“The room was small, the atmosphere frosty, and the faces unfriendly, except for the one Negro juryman. I was not invited to be seated. I stood behind the least antagonistic member of the jury, the Negro, to testify. Their questions were terse; my answers, I am afraid, convinced very few … I was not sure as I left whether I should go back to work or get my affairs in order in preparation for a jail sentence.”
The EDD’s defense was based primarily on the contention that it was trying to clear all flood waters as quickly as possible. The rainfall was so great that the moves proposed by various Broward interests would not really have helped, Johnson said. In addition, the EDD was trying to avoid bloodshed and the destruction of district structures.
Within a week the grand jury returned its verdict. It recommended no action against Hilsabeck or Johnson and called for repair of the flood-damaged works.
OUT OF THE TURMOIL OF THE 1947 floods came a new agency which we know today as the South Florida Water Management District. The district includes all or part of 16 counties, with a population of 5 million and an area totaling 18,000 square miles and 1,400 miles of canals and levees.
Looking back at the days of the Great South Florida Flood, Lamar Johnson wrote in 1974: “The substantial levees of the conservation areas separate the Everglades waters from the strictly local flood waters. As a result, they have built subdivision-type developments almost to these levees, confident of their flood protection.
“It is my opinion, however, that anytime that area gets a foot or more of rainfall overnight, the shades of 1947’s flood will be with them again.”
Sooner or later, we will find out if he is right.
