1955 Santa Cruz Flood Recollections
Page One
Dave Giggy ('57)
--
Early that evening after I had heard what was going on with the river; I
got down to the Water St Bridge. (I had my drivers license that year but don't
remember how I got there.) I crossed that bridge because the water wasn't very
high at that point. I waded down to Leibbrandt and Puget's clothing store
where I had worked part time for years. There we started getting everything we
could above what we thought would be the water line. They had a loft in the
back room that was about 10' up so we filled that with suits and whatever else
would fit. The remainder we put on shelve and ledges as high as we could. I
would guess that the time this took place was about 5-7 PM. [Moderator:
probably later in the evening.] At that time the water was about thigh high.
I then waded down Pacific to my dad's store, Landess and Touhy, at the south
end of the street [near Laurel St]. My dad was a partner with Lyndal Perrigo
in the store. Lyndal also had the local ambulance service and Perrigo's body
shop at the time. We had known the Perrigo's since my folks moved to Santa
Cruz in 1941. They were our next door neighbors on the West side for a few
years.
By the time I got to the market, the water was rising fast. Once again we
moved all the canned goods, etc. into a loft area in the rear and placed
everything else as high as possible. By about 10 or 11 PM the water was chest
high and we had to decide where to go before it got much higher.
Because we lived on East Cliff Dr and we were on the other side of the
river, we thought about wading down to the boardwalk area and walking across
the RR trestle but decided against it.
We ended up walking to the Perrigos up Laurel St to King and then to their
house where we stayed the night. The next morning, after the water subsided,
we went back to the market. It was a mess. The water marks on the walls were
over 4' high and the mud on the floor was 6-12" high and mixed with all
kinds of unknown stuff.
The most memorable thing about the morning after was the stink. The
northern part of Pacific had less damage and the closer to the beach one got,
the deeper the water was due to elevation changes I suppose (and which I
hadn't been aware of until then).
Another amazing thing when you compare those times to these is that I don't
recall a report of a single incident of looting.
I do remember that in the years following, what a row there was over
keeping the river in its natural state or allowing the Army Corps of Engineers
to build the current dikes.
Can you imagine what a furor that would create now?
Wayne Salmon ('54)
--
Classmate Delbert Kreinbring and his younger brother [Maedle ('57)] (both whom died in a 1962 car accident) and I were attending the Santa Cruz Theater when someone came out on stage and said Pacific Avenue was flooding and would we please leave.
We thought they were crazy.
When we left, we heard that an old couple was stuck in a cabin behind the post office. We went to Delbert's house, got his boat and went to the rescue of the two trapped people, both of whom had known heart conditions. Our mistake was taking a real idiot with us who said he knew how to get there.
We launched from the post office and had no trouble reaching the cabin; then the troubles started. The local expert promptly lost one of the oars. I jumped out of the boat into belt-deep water and entered the cabin. I'll never forget that when I entered the house all I could see of a stove was a row of spice jars along the top. At this time the house shifted on its foundation because water four- to five-feet deep was hitting its side. The door closed, and I was left in the dark with a 70-plus-year-old woman hanging on to me and screaming. Her husband was not doing much better. I calmed the lady down, and we managed to open the door and get everyone into the boat.
With only one oar we were in trouble. I stripped down and swam to a nearby truck while holding the anchor rope. Someone then floated a rope to us, which we tied to the bow of the boat. Many willing hands then pulled us to shore. It was an exciting evening that I'll never forget.
Desmond O'Neill ('57)
--
I was working night shifts as a desk clerk/bellman at the St. George Hotel on Pacific Avenue. The night of the flood we stood in the lobby watching the water flow down the street; eventually we realized that the level was rising - FAST - and rolled up the big carpet in the lobby to act as a barrier across the front door, since of course we didn't have sandbags.
Then the water coming down the back of the hotel, on Front Street, came in from that direction instead, and the basement under the hotel flooded and water started coming up the elevator shaft. I went around knocking on doors and alerting our guests for a possible evacuation, although there really was no place to go and no way of getting there by that time.
For a while we were also getting mild but disquieting electric shocks from the water conducting the juice from some panel or wall-socket....The telephones of course went out, and then the electricity, so we were left in total darkness except for a couple of candles, as we watched the furniture float around in the lobby, but at least the possibility of death by electrocution seemed to have passed.
As morning dawned some small boats appeared on Pacific Avenue, plying aimlessly up and down, apparently sight-seeing and taking photographs, and then a Sentinel News photographer in wading boots showed up and took pictures of everything. Some City workers then turned up in a big dump truck and began taking out guests who wanted to leave, and as I recall by about 3 p.m. the floodwaters receded out of the lobby, leaving it a mess, and I walked home and threw my shoes away.
One unexpected benefit of the flood - the restaurant/bar operation in the hotel had to dispose of a lot of flood-damaged booze which couldn't be sold, so after it was assessed for insurance claim purposes, and (supposedly) destroyed, I and some friends squirreled some away and sold it to our classmates out of the back of a car. I wound up keeping several bottles of Cutty Sark for a very long time; I never really liked the taste of the stuff. I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to drink it, but I did feel somehow that it was something to have around, to offer to friends in little shot-glasses out behind the garage. Some of you may remember that booze.
Jun Lee ('54)
--
It had been raining heavily and the water level was rising under the houses in Chinatown. This wasn't unusual, and the houses had been built to accommodate flooding under the floor.
Several Red Cross volunteers came by with soup and information. I believe Alan Holbert (Class of 1955) was among them. Subsequently, my oldest brother, George, arrived and said we had to leave because the river was cresting.
I joined George at Webber's Photo Shop on Pacific Avenue, where we worked to help move the stock to higher levels away from the floodwaters. This was a huge job because most of the extra stock was in the basement. I saw Sam Leask across the street calking the glass doors of his department store. I was wearing a pair of waders that belonged to another brother, Young, and I was the only dry one at Webber's that night.
After doing what we could, we locked arms to wade across Pacific Avenue, which by that time had water up to our knees. Several people were taking pictures that night; someone took a picture of George with his camera, with the river swirling around him. Another picture I remember was of us sitting on sandbags in front of the front door to Webber's. And there was one of a Nash Metropolitan that had floated down Pacific Avenue and was hung up on a parking meter.
I ended up that night sleeping on the floor at the West Side home of one of the men who worked for Webber's. The next morning the water had receded, so we went down to Webber's to help clean up. The scene I remember [most] was walking down to the basement and finding [that] all of the flash bulbs were hanging from the ceiling, stuck there with the glue-like mud.
When we were able to get back to Chinatown, we found that the flood level had reached the top drawer of the dressers. What a mess that was. We hosed down the floors and shoveled out the mud -- and life went on.
The Red Cross came and took us to Penny's for some clothes. I ended up with a new turquoise nylon jacket, which came in very handy in snow-covered Susanville when I returned to Lassen Junior College a few days later.
Bob Lemmon Jr ('57)
--
On the evening of Thursday 22 Dec 1955 I drove my sister Jane ('58) and some friends from the First Baptist Church to the home of Fred and Theo Giggy; they lived on the point overlooking what later became the yacht harbor. While Carol Giggy ('58) was there, Dave Giggy ('57) and his father were not. (I only recently discovered why Dave and his father were not at home.)
Because I had a cold I did not go out caroling in the neighborhood with Jane, Carol, and the others; rather I stayed at the Giggy home and drove Mrs. Giggy bonkers by noodling on the piano -- though she never complained.
When the carolers returned they were wet but in good spirits. We left the Giggy's sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m., drove back along East Cliff Drive and toward the Riverside Bridge. As I drove along the levee toward the bridge the water level was at the top of the levee and was spilling over onto the street.
Because I was driving with a Learner's Permit 11 days short of my 16th birthday, I certainly didn't want to stop even tho the water was up to the bottom of the hubcaps. While driving along the overflowing river I noticed a large tree about 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter headed downstream, roots first.
After crossing the Riverside bridge I decided to take a different route home than Laurel St extension and Laurel St, and drove up Third St onto Beach Hill. Though I don't remember my exact route over Beach Hill, I did take West Cliff Dr from its junction with Pacific Ave and Washington St to Bay St, then California St to Van Ness Ave.
When we got home my sister Jane's then-boyfriend, Jim Lewis ('56), was there along with his parents, brother Bob ('57), and their dog. (My mother was not too crazy about the dog being in the house.)
Not too long thereafter my dad, who was not only Chairman of the local Red Cross branch but also the acting Disaster Relief Chairman, returned home briefly (probably to use the sandbox) and told us that the river had been diverted by a log jam at the then under-construction pilings for the new bypass just downstream from the tannery. It had come down River St and then down Pacific Ave. He said they were going back to several of the trailer parks along the river and rescue those who refused to leave earlier because they had never seen any notable flooding during the years they had lived there. He left again after being home briefly.
The Lewises slept in the living room, my two sisters in the first bedroom, my parents in theirs, and I shared the third bedroom with my brothers, David ('60) and Warren ('64).
The next day I went to the El Rio Trailer Court to help retrieve some things for Mrs Hattie Garrison, who had sold us the house on Van Ness Ave in November 1954. The inside of her trailer was a mess. I particularly remember one expensive fur that was like a large drowned cat!
Later that day I ended up at the Civic Auditorium stirring big pots of something (soup?) in the kitchen where my dad was directing things. (He became a cook in the original Civilian Conservation Corps during the mid-1930s when many of the boys complained about their cook and his offerings. His mother felt that all 10 of her children should be able to cook, even the five boys.)
Later some professionals such as Edward LaFrance, a cook for Danny Cavadias at the Manhattan Restaurant and Bar across the alley from the United Cigar Store, showed up and I departed.
When I returned home there were a considerable number of new and used cars from the various car dealers parked on California St.
Even though it was a couple of days before the power was restored, my mother had no problem preparing meals since we had both a Servel refrigerator and a gas stove. While our floor furnace in the front room would not work because of the power outage, the Panel-Ray in my bedroom had a thermostat with a bimetallic strip that did not need electricity to operate. Unfortunately that meant that our bedroom was overly hot so that the heat would migrate down the hallway to some of the other rooms.
Later in the week I, Gordon Athearn ('58), perhaps George Allshouse ('55), and a few other joined our Explorer Post leader at our former meeting place on the banks of the San Lorenzo at the end of Josephine St. [If memory serves, Pacific Plantronics built its first plant there during the 1960s.] The building was fairly good-sized with windows at each end. The force of the flood took out all of the windows and about 2 to 2.5 feet of mud was deposited in the building.
Fortunately we did not have much gear stored there other then some old canvas tents that were likely WWII surplus. I think we trashed them rather than try to clean them up. If memory serves, it took quite a while to dig all of the mud out of the meeting place, for I do recall that we used it again the next couple of years.
The main lesson I learned from the flood was to stick with gas (or propane) appliances, if possible. Also, when a disaster of the magnitude of the 1955 Flood or 1989 Loma Prieta Quake occurs, you can count on not only neighbors but also total strangers to help out.
Len Klempnauer ('54)
--
After leaving the Del Mar Theater that night, my girlfriend, Barbara Morton (Class of 1955), and I drove to the San Lorenzo River between Canfield Avenue and Bixby Street and walked along the riverbank. It was about 9 o'clock, and the river was only a foot or so from overflowing. We drove over the Riverside Avenue Bridge, and she took me home. (I was going to college and couldn't afford a car; she was working and had one.) I lived on the West Side, and she had to drive across the Water Street Bridge or the Soquel Avenue Bridge to get to her home on the East Side.
I didn't learn about the flood until 8 the next morning, when I went to work at my parents' restaurant - the Cross Roads Drive-In at the foot of West Cliff Drive adjacent to the railroad depot. (The water had come up to the front door but never entered the building.) I couldn't get through to Barbara on the telephone to find out whether she had made it home safely. Later I found out she did, thank God.
Bob Branstetter, who lived a few houses away, and I went to Mission Hill Junior High, where the Red Cross had established a shelter in the auditorium, to offer our help the next night. But there were plenty of volunteers by then, and our services weren't needed.
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Last revised on 18 April 2009
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