The Flood
From James Donahue’s Journal
I should write more about the summer of 1986 when the rains came. As noted above, the entire Thumb Area was hit with something like 24 inches of rainfall within about a week’s time. While that amount of water can usually be temporarily destructive in most areas, in Sanilac, Huron and Tuscola Counties, where the land is mostly flat as a pancake, it was a disaster. All three counties were involved in the agricultural industry. The land was rich and just about any crop could be grown there. So farming was extensively diversified. The farms produced corn, oats, wheat, soybeans, cucumbers, sugar beets, strawberries, apples, pears, eggs, milk, beef, pork, chicken and turkeys. If a farmer could think up an idea for a crop, he could grow it.
To deal with heavy rains and spring runoff from heavy winter snows, all of the counties in the area had active irrigation programs. In fact, they elected drain commissioners who had staffs of people that worked full time planning, digging and maintaining drains to carry the water into the natural streams and out into Lake Huron. Some of those ditches were deep. Every landowner was taxed to pay a share of the cost of digging and maintaining those all-important drains.
The rains of the summer of 1986 overwhelmed the drains. They came in late summer when crops were ready for harvest. Consequently entire fields of farmland were so flooded, they looked like lakes. The entire area was declared a disaster area by the federal government. I wrote disaster story after disaster story, talking to farmers, getting their pictures standing up to their knees in water in those fields filled with sugar beets, cucumbers and soybeans. The heavy harvest equipment mired in the mud. Farmers didn’t try to harvest the corn until winter arrived and the ground froze, but even then the big harvesters fell through the ice crust and mired in the mud below.
All of the streams in the area were flooded over their banks. The many homes built along those streams flooded as well. Water flooded the roads and it was hazardous to drive on many of the gravel country roads because of possible washouts and bridge failures. You could not see the condition of the roads under all of that water. Our own home near Elk Creek was nearly flooded. The water came within a few hundred feet of the house and the sump pump in our basement was busy throughout the crisis.
The heavy rains also hit St. Clair County as well. One of the staff reporters at Port Huron and I shared an Associated Press award that year for the work we did in reporting the disaster. That was quite an affair. We drove together to Detroit to a big award dinner.
From James Donahue’s Journal
I should write more about the summer of 1986 when the rains came. As noted above, the entire Thumb Area was hit with something like 24 inches of rainfall within about a week’s time. While that amount of water can usually be temporarily destructive in most areas, in Sanilac, Huron and Tuscola Counties, where the land is mostly flat as a pancake, it was a disaster. All three counties were involved in the agricultural industry. The land was rich and just about any crop could be grown there. So farming was extensively diversified. The farms produced corn, oats, wheat, soybeans, cucumbers, sugar beets, strawberries, apples, pears, eggs, milk, beef, pork, chicken and turkeys. If a farmer could think up an idea for a crop, he could grow it.
To deal with heavy rains and spring runoff from heavy winter snows, all of the counties in the area had active irrigation programs. In fact, they elected drain commissioners who had staffs of people that worked full time planning, digging and maintaining drains to carry the water into the natural streams and out into Lake Huron. Some of those ditches were deep. Every landowner was taxed to pay a share of the cost of digging and maintaining those all-important drains.
The rains of the summer of 1986 overwhelmed the drains. They came in late summer when crops were ready for harvest. Consequently entire fields of farmland were so flooded, they looked like lakes. The entire area was declared a disaster area by the federal government. I wrote disaster story after disaster story, talking to farmers, getting their pictures standing up to their knees in water in those fields filled with sugar beets, cucumbers and soybeans. The heavy harvest equipment mired in the mud. Farmers didn’t try to harvest the corn until winter arrived and the ground froze, but even then the big harvesters fell through the ice crust and mired in the mud below.
All of the streams in the area were flooded over their banks. The many homes built along those streams flooded as well. Water flooded the roads and it was hazardous to drive on many of the gravel country roads because of possible washouts and bridge failures. You could not see the condition of the roads under all of that water. Our own home near Elk Creek was nearly flooded. The water came within a few hundred feet of the house and the sump pump in our basement was busy throughout the crisis.
The heavy rains also hit St. Clair County as well. One of the staff reporters at Port Huron and I shared an Associated Press award that year for the work we did in reporting the disaster. That was quite an affair. We drove together to Detroit to a big award dinner.