Bartlesville Devastated by Deluge : Homes, Hopes Gone With ‘Flood of ‘86’

Lillie Tate’s photo albums, the pictorial history of generations, sat ruined on the coffee table.

The pictures were buckled from the water that had flowed over them and the mud of the Caney River that had settled on the pages.

She found the albums and what was left of the family Bible when she returned Monday to see what the swirling, oily floodwaters had done to her small brick home in the northeast corner of this devastated city.

She saw the furniture that could not be saved, her freezer overturned, precious knickknacks turned to mud-brown garbage. The stench of the floodwater permeated the house. The rugs squished underfoot.

“Well, it’s terrible,” she said. “Everything’s gone.”

So the 79-year-old woman, still in shock from the loss, started over. She began ripping out the rug in the bathroom. She went to the garage and began to hose it down, to clean out the sludge so there would be a place to store and dry out what she could save.

Wanda Franks, her daughter, drove up to help. She put the photo albums and the Bible in the welcome sunshine to dry. Then others came--friends and relatives whose own homes had been spared.

“At least we’re all well,” said Franks. “We’ll all sit and cry a little bit.”

In Bartlesville, they are already calling this the Flood of 1986, the one against which all others will be measured. Not even the great flood of 1926 was this destructive. City Manager Tom Mikulecky said on Monday that no one yet knew the full extent of the destruction because the waters had not yet receded.

The downpours that hit throughout the Midwest last week overwhelmed riverbeds and reservoirs. In Bartlesville, where the flood level is 13 feet, the Caney River crested late Saturday at 31 feet. As much as 24 inches of rain during the week filled the Hulah and Copan reservoirs upstream, forcing the Army Corps of Engineers to make emergency releases of water into the Caney and Arkansas rivers.

On Saturday morning, the people here knew they were in for a flood that not even the old-timers had seen before there were dams to control the river. Bartlesville was cut in two by the swollen river. On one side lay downtown. On the other were suburbs and U.S. 75, the main highway to Tulsa. The only way to get across was by boat or helicopter.

On Monday morning, one of the three bridges across the Caney was opened to traffic and the road was jammed with cars.

Richard Clem returned to his home and found two water moccasins coiled in his living room. He killed them. The cribs of his two young daughters were destroyed, and so was the new toy chest that he and his wife, Melba, had just bought for them. The washing machine was saved because there had been time to place it on cinder blocks. The dryer and refrigerator were ruined.

Mike and Marguerite Moody and their four sons worked Monday morning at ripping out their carpet. They removed ruined furniture and placed it in a dumpster the city had dropped off in front of the house. Their two vans and a 1982 Chevrolet had been left behind when the flood hit. The river was more than a mile away, and Moody never thought the house would be in danger.

“The old-timers who have been here for 70 years said the water never got to the houses up here,” he said. “We lost about everything in the house. The old-timers--you figured they knew what they were talking about.”

Moody, who was laid off from his job in March, mused about what would happen next. The cars and the house were ruined and there had not been much money to spare before the flood. He makes $3.85 an hour working for a cleaning service.

“If it gets too bad, we’ll just have to let them have the house and start over,” he said.

The stories went on with dismal similarity. Bartlesville, the headquarters of Phillips Petroleum Co., was already in sad shape. The company had reduced its work force by 2,700 people in the last 18 months because of the depressed oil market.

Jimmy Martin said he was going to keep a shotgun loaded at his mother’s flooded-out house, lest the latest disaster make thieves of desperate people.

On Sunday night, an exhausted Betty Byfield was sitting in a motel restaurant, sipping her second rum and orange juice. She worked at the flooded-out Heritage House Nursing Home, which had been evacuated on Saturday. They had kept the severity of the damage from the residents, fearing the shock would be too much for them.

“Sooner or later, we are going to have to tell them they lost everything they left behind,” she said.