In 1982 the river crested at 26.93 feet, 30,000 volunteers saved the city, and Reagan named it ‘The City That Saved Itself.’

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President Ronald Reagan passing a sandbag on the river line in Fort Wayne, 16 March 1982 Public domain · source file

FLOOD 1982

Reagan's visit and sandbagging, 16 March 1982, National Archives and DVIDS photographs; the History Center's artifact essay.

The crest. The History Center's label for its “Dehydrated Flood Water” can (97.29.2) says the river “crested at 26.93 ft, just shy of the record 27.1 ft recorded in 1913.” The National Weather Service historical-crest series for the Maumee at Fort Wayne says 25.93 ft (17 Mar 1982) and 26.10 ft (26 Mar 1913). A full foot apart, gauge or datum unstated on the label. This record prints the NWS series and flags the label, never the reverse. Chart below.

~30,000 volunteers, the figure on the commemorative can and in the University of Delaware's 1984 case study alike. (A South Side High School yearbook's “one-third of 173,000” is a higher, unsourced contemporary account; Mayor Win Moses's later “11,000 high school students… over 1 million sandbags” is participant memoir.)

“Reagan coined ‘The City That Saved Itself.’” Record-based accounts credit national newspapers or say the name was “reportedly” earned. No Reagan transcript with the phrase was found. Damage likewise splits by estimate: $56.1 million (News-Sentinel figure) against a $21.8 million early estimate in the 1983 yearbook, state which estimate, dated when.

Sources: History Center artifact 97.29.2, fwhistorycenter.org; NWS series via aroundfortwayne.com

The fight behind the numbers, so the split figures have their context. The rivers rose from the night of 12 March 1982; evacuations are counted at about 9,000 in most accounts and at 10,000 by 17 March in the Delaware case study's chronology. Damage ran to 1,820 residences and 260 businesses, and volunteers are credited with saving about 1,860 properties outright. At the Pemberton dike in Lakeside, volunteers relayed 287,000 sandbags hand to hand; sandbagging headquarters sat at Memorial Coliseum; the schools closed and their students filled bags in what national coverage called a children's crusade. The volunteer count splits the same way the crest does: the Delaware study counts some 30,000 volunteers including about 18,000 students, the commemorative can prints 30,000, and Mayor Win Moses's participant account says 11,000 high school students and over a million sandbags. Reagan sandbagged at the Sherman Boulevard dike on 16 March in boots lent by a volunteer, Greg Miller, and the federal disaster declaration followed his visit. None of the splits is hidden by this record; each figure travels with its source attached, which is the ledger's whole method in one file.

Added sources: News-Sentinel flood retrospective; Phillips, The Fort Wayne Flood: A Case Study, University of Delaware Disaster Research Center WP 73 (1984); Education Week, March 1982

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