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Show Page 5 escape. Two blocks from city center the flood advance was slowed for a few seconds by the May Street bridge. Here the waters built to the height of their fury, then surged forward upon the doomed town as the bridge collapsed. Houses were picked up like cardboard boxes and crushed. Some were carried along on top of the water. Others, while being thrown about, were destroyed by the grinding, churning mass beneath as they filled with water. In some cases, only roofs remained afloat. Seventy-year-old Julius Keithly was upstairs when the water hit his house. Seeing the bottom part of the structure about to wash away, Keithly climbed atop the roof. As he floated downstream, Keithly saved William Ayres, Jr. by pulling him aboard. He also attempted to reach his wife, but she was pinioned hopelessly by debris and could not be freed. The roof floated two miles downstream before its occupants stepped ashore. Phil Cohn, asleep when the flood arrived, was carried with the waves until his house disintegrated. He clung to the wreckage and finally emerged in an alfalfa field. Dan Statler, who lost his wife and six of seven children, climbed into a dry goods box with his little daughter and lived. Those fortunate enough to reach the hillsides immediately formed rescue parties. By tossing ropes to all who drifted close to shore, they saved many lives. After the main wall of water reached the railroad depot a mile below city center, Bruce Kelley, 31, and Leslie Matlock, 30, the son of an ex-sheriff of Morrow County, determined to warn Lexington and lone. (These towns, around 500 inhabitants each in 1903, are nine and eighteen miles northwest of Heppner.) Kelley saddled two horses in a livery stable while Matlock broke into Gilliam and Bisbee's hardware store for wire cutters. |