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for DS106 Daily Create

Mill River Flood

What saved the Hills and the Hannums in their house that day was perhaps the water itself, strong currents pushing two downed trees around the building as barrier, dividing the flood like a monstrous Moses made of fluid and strength, parting the waters around the people like some whimsical god

Reference: The Mill River Flood of May 1874, in Williamsburg, Leeds Massachusetts

#MillRiverFlood

She frames every day with a smile and with laughter; petals towards the sun

for DailyHaikuPrompt

Mill River Flood: 8:00 am

Hard to even imagine what Eugene Davis saw as he stood there, watching the storm of flood approaching – it wasn’t water he saw - it was a tornado of brush, trees and trash; of boards, timbers and buttons; but, he said, not water, not yet, anyway, only a deluge of lost things, twenty feet high, and rising

Reference: The Mill River Flood of May 1874, in Williamsburg, Leeds Massachusetts

#MillRiverFlood

Kettle bubbling, the chemistry of new tea nearly in motion

DailyHaiku

Mill River Flood: 9:00 am

As is too often the case, the suddenly surged river had a mind all of its own

And luck, too, played its terrible hand for the people of the village

The West was safe; The East, not

Reference: The Mill River Flood of May 1874, in Williamsburg, Leeds Massachusetts

#MillRiverFlood

A plot of land, sand, a scattered pile, an army awaits instructions

for DailyHaikuPrompt

Mill River Flood: Next Day

The first bodies borne by water, and taken from this Earth, were buried, on this Sunday afternoon, May 17, 1874

and John Belcher keeps ringing the church bell of warning in his dreams, the sound now one of loss and the mourners, singing

Reference: The Mill River Flood of May 1874, in Williamsburg, Leeds Massachusetts https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/407b6288771447afb2961988ef321fd4

#MillRiverFlood

Mill River Flood: 9:00 am

In New York City, the messaged wire to the owner of the woolen mill from bookkeeper Gaius Wood read like a flash fiction tragedy:

‘it gave way … washed away … half the village … don’t sail …”

And so the telegraph followed the river, sending news of the unimaginable into the world

Reference: The Mill River Flood of May 1874, in Williamsburg, Leeds Massachusetts https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/407b6288771447afb2961988ef321fd4

#MillRiverFlood

Mill River Flood: 7:30 am

Later, it was known: Lewis Bodman probably knew, that they all knew the leaks in the dam, grew, but too few of those in power cared to invest enough to stop the disaster until that fateful day in May 1874 when panic flew, but never fast enough to outrun water and wave barreling through

Reference: The Mill River Flood of May 1874, in Williamsburg, Leeds Massachusetts https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/407b6288771447afb2961988ef321fd4

#MillRiverFlood