Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, August 26, 1997

Acadia communities inundated by Flood of 1940

by Jim Bradshaw

On Wednesday, Aug. 7, the heavens opened and torrential rains fell on southwest Louisiana for four days without stopping. Twenty inches of rain fell on Crowley in 24 hours. Twenty inches fell over the four days. And there was no place for most of it to go. It had already been a wet year. The streams were full and the ground was soaked even before the tropical rainfall. Most of Crowley would be under water for six days.

The flood waters would cover an area that included Branch, Roberts Cove, Rayne, Crowley, Estherwood, Midland, Mermentau, Morse, Gueydan, and Lake Arthur. Parts of Lafayette along the Vermilion River were also under water.

The water began rising before daylight on Friday morning, and kept rising even after the rains stopped on Saturday, Aug. 10. By Sunday, the high water mark reached 8 feet in some areas of Crowley. The town's 9,523 people were marooned. There was no electricity, no telephone service, no newspaper, the roads were covered, and the railroad bridge over the Mermentau River had washed out -- not even the mail could get through.

More than 80 percent of Crowley's homes held water at depths that varied from a few inches in the north part of town to 8 feet along what had been a drainage ditch in the central part of town, but that had now turned into a lake. In many homes all of the furniture and clothing were destroyed. Six days of standing water made cleaning and salvaging virtually impossible. In some areas of town, swift currents washed houses off their foundations.

All of the downtown businesses had up to 4 feet of water in them. Nearly all of them opened their second stories for employees and their families to use as refuges.

The National Guard and the Coast Guard came in to Acadia Parish to evacuate people and to keep order. Several thousand people were evacuated to the east by train. Those whose houses, were under water and had nowhere to go, were sent to refugee camps in Lafayette and Baton Rouge. About 6,000 Acadia Parish residents were cared for in the centers. But most people stayed to take care of their property and to begin the cleanup once the water went down.

Trains came in from the east bringing food and medical supplies and left loaded with refugees. Local grocery stores distributed canned goods as long as they had the goods to distribute. With the labels soaked off of the cans, meals sometimes turned into a series of surprises. Washtubs became shopping carts, used to float the groceries home.

People came from Eunice, Alexandria, New Iberia, Lake Charles, Jennings, Welsh, and around Acadiana, bringing boats and food. Many automobiles had been taken to the railroad right-of-way, the highest point in Crowley, when the waters began to rise. Those that did not get there were covered with water and pushed aside to make room for boat traffic. When the water began to recede, horses and wagons were used in the town.

Dr. E. S. Peterman made house calls on horseback, giving typhoid shots to everyone he could. Miraculously, there were no human deaths attributed to the flood.  But more than 50,000 animals drowned or starved to death in Acadia Parish.

Tons of lime were brought in to Crowley to spread throughout the city to keep down the terrible odor of dead and decaying plants and animals now exposed to the hot August sun. Garden hoses and shovels were used to clean homes and buildings of the mud and silt that covered the floors aired walls. Wood floors buckled as they dried.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).