Jim Bradshaw: 70 years ago, dangerous floods hit south Louisiana
There were some pretty good thunderstorms across south Louisiana on April 24, 1953 — the kind we see regularly when fronts slide through the area.
Nobody suspected they were the beginning of a series of downpours that eventually sent every stream in south Louisiana way out of its banks.
Twelve people died as a direct result of the floods they caused. Damage was estimated at $35 million, second only to the harm brought to Louisiana by the great flood of 1927.
The area between the Atchafalaya and Sabine rivers got the worst of it.
Weather records show two spates of especially heavy rainfall, April 17 through May 5, and May 11 through May 19, with downpours ranging from 10 inches to more than 35 inches.
“Lake Charles … suffered the most damaging flood in its history, and 15,000 people were left homeless. Upstream on the Calcasieu River the smaller towns of Oakdale and Kinder were hard hit. …
"At the crest of the flood, 60 percent of [Lake Charles] was under water … and 2,000 homes were flooded. The barracks area of the Lake Charles Air Force Base had to be evacuated, and water covered many of the operating airstrips,” according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“The most remarkable [flooding] occurred in the Calcasieu River basin, and the Cocodrie-Courtableau Bayou system, and the lower Sabine River,” according to the report.
Longtime residents of Oakdale told the local newspaper that the Calcasieu River overflows were “the worst … ever witnessed and that more homes were involved by flood waters and torrential rain waters than ever before,”
Records kept by the National Weather Service in Lake Charles show that the 1953 marks are still the highest ever seen at several places on the Calcasieu River, including Glenmora, Oakdale, Oberlin and Kinder. Water levels reached on Bayou Nezpique at Basile, Bayou des Cannes at Eunice, Bayou Cocodrie at Clearwater, and Bayou Courtableau at Washington are also still records.
There was no gauge on Bayou Courtableau in 1927, but older citizens said the 1953 flood was “nearly as high.” A resident of Beggs, just north of Washington where bayous Boeuf and Cocodrie merge to form the Courtableau, said he had not seen Bayou Boeuf “that high in 50 years.”
More than 500 people were evacuated from Washington, Beggs, Dubuisson and Garland. Port Barre was “hard hit by the overflow … with about 40 families forced out of their homes,” according to another report.
The Southern Pacific line was “put out of commission … when workmen, who had been feverishly sand bagging approaches to a trestle about a mile north of Washington, were forced to give up as the banks collapsed.”
The Eunice News reported May 21 that the town was “the center of a seriously flooded five-parish area. … St. Landry, Evangeline, Acadia, Allen, and Jeff Davis have suffered serious crop damage as well as property loss. …
"Nearly every major stream in the area has broken all records in heights. … Hard hit were travelers who were caught in the area, some of whom are marooned here.
“The Highway Department was routing all west-bound traffic east to Krotz Springs, thence to Alexandria and Leesville, but … had to discontinue this routing because
of road blocks east of DeQuincy.”
In Vermilion Parish, Gueydan was hit by “one of the hardest rains since 1940,” the Abbeville Meridional reported. The deluge flooded “all of the lower parts of the town, places that have not been under water since 1940.”
Gueydan was of many towns inundated in 1940 when a stalled hurricane dropped record rainfalls across a wide swath of south Louisiana.
As in 1940, heavy rains were also reported in Kaplan, Erath, Delcambre, and Maurice.
The Vermilion River overflowed into Abbeville streets and into the Steen syrup mill and the town’s water and light plant, and the downpours there also brought a new take to the term “raining cats and dogs.”
According to the Meridional, “Ulysse Broussard, a street department employee, discovered a three-foot alligator on Magdelen Square early Monday morning. … It has not even been theorized how the reptile got to the square, but it rained hard enough Sunday night to have ‘rained’ something. It could be alligators.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.