 The latest weapons coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier stand ready on the alert all over the world to defend this country. View the American people against aggression. This is the Big Picture, an official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. The Big Picture you are about to see might well have been titled Disaster USA. For it pictures a recent great catastrophe in our nation. Something that might overwhelm any part of the country and countless Americans at any time. It shows to the Army Corps of Engineers at work. They carry on their capable shoulders a double duty. In war the Army Engineers have the combat function of building bridges and roads so that the Army can march on to victory. In peace they are responsible for the civil works of national stature at harbors and along rivers whose waters they control in mighty dams. This is today's Big Picture. If you have traveled among the original 13 states you know that many of the more northern ones early developed industries, mills and factories driven by water power, gift of the swift ever flowing rivers of the region. Around the factories, along the streams, grew up villages, then towns, then cities. For when industry no longer used water for mechanical power it needed enormous quantities of it for processing, cooling, washing, hydrating. Now it was mid-summer 1955. Hurricane Connie, heading north, had gentled down to a hard rain and the thirsty ground soaked it up. Such was the face of things on the 17th of August 55. To be sure, Hurricane Diane had followed Connie's track northward and all America sighed with relief when Diane blew itself out off the North Carolina coast. But unobserved, a thick canopy of water-soaked clouds continued on and during the brief hours of August 18th and 19th dumped 10 to 20 inches of tropical downpour on the lower watersheds of eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, southern New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The saturated soil could absorb none of the deluge. Dry ravines became roaring creeks. Rivers became rivers. Rivers were swollen to mighty torrents, racing for the sea, carrying with them the debris of life and living, overwhelming and bursting apart the work of generations of men. It was a flash flood of tremendous proportions, unprecedented in its terrifying fury and violence. In terms of property damage, the most costly flood in American history, millions of tons of raging water smashing at factories, shops and homes. Streets became riverbed. While citizens that day were struggling to save their possessions and themselves, the armed services were sending rescue teams and supplies and the Army's Corps of Engineers responsible by congressional statute for flood fighting rushed engineer specialists and heavy construction equipment to the flood zone. Later that day the waters were subsiding. Those who had escaped went back to the work of rescue. The helpless, the stranded were brought to safety. The very old and the very young. Another few hours and the flash flood was over. The rivers were returning to normal flow. Now the devastation could be measured. More than 300 towns eroded, smashed, gutted. Towns in which the Army engineers were already at work. Thousands of buildings destroyed or damaged. Real loss, thousands of people homeless. More than 100,000 with their jobs swept away. Real cost, almost 200 lives. Hundreds of bridges destroyed or badly damaged. Even the dead were not spared. You will remember Broadhead Creek near Stroudsburg in Pennsylvania. On this stark and empty plane stood the 14 rustic cabins of Camp Davis where 37 persons were swept to death in the watery avalanche. Many of them women, most of them children. The State National Guard and Army units promptly mobilized to guard direct and comfort. Channel clearance. One of the first objectives of the Corps of Engineers. If another downpour came the streams would not be blocked and dammed with debris. At bridge crossings the rubble of the old made way for the launching of the new. Engineer units, state employees and civilian crews hired by the Army's Corps of Engineers erected more than 100 Bailey bridges to connect up highways and streets and thus end the isolation of scores of cities and towns. The Bailey Bridge is like a king-sized director set. A well-trained crew can assemble and launch one across a 100 foot stream in two and one-quarter hours and it will carry from 28 tons to 60 tons depending upon its type. Thousands of them were erected in wartime by cracked combat engineer teams to span the Rhine, the Volchurno, the Rapido and the steep gullies of Korea. As fast as a Bailey was completed supply and work vehicles of reconstruction moved across. Throughout the emergency signal corps mobile units maintained communications transmitting reports and orders for food equipment and medicines and the Army Medical Service was on constant call. Pure drinking water must be promptly provided and that was an Army engineer's job undertaken by its specialists. Tank trucks carried the water to the waiting people and mama's little helpers were ready and willing. Through the Red Cross came not only food, clothing and money but also the medicines and serums which made possible a winning fight against pestilence. Military and civilian doctors inoculated old and young against tetanus and typhoid. Everybody's happy and safe. The Salvation Army's mobile canteens took care of all. Kitchens were set up by the Army's National Guard to feed those unable to provide for themselves. Everybody helped. Those who had shared with those who had not. Supplies poured in from the nation. Nobody was forgotten. To children everywhere it was a picnic. It was no picnic to the parents of this homeless family but there were no tears. They went smiling through. Boards follow and cross the rivers and therefore transportation was one of the major victims of the disaster. The Army's Transportation Corps immediately took from their cocoons its crack diesel engines. Stockpiled at Fort Eustis for war's emergency. For this was war against a devastation as great as any bombing attack. The crippled railroads rented the engines for the emergency to return them to their cocoons without expense to the government. President Eisenhower made a personal survey of the devastated region. He saw for himself the extent of the loss and suffering. Shocked the president declared the entire flood zone a disaster area. He called upon the Federal Civil Defense Administration through its administrator Val Peterson to bring relief to the people of the stricken region. Administrator Peterson not only set his own national organization to work. He also delegated to the Army's Corps of Engineers the duty of carrying out the reconstruction phase of the president's disaster order and Operation NOAA was born. The Army Corps of Engineers has a unique organization in being which covers the entire United States in 10 separate division areas each in charge of a division engineer and each divided into districts where required. An emergency in any part of the country along any river system at an important harbor or huge metropolitan target thus could be met and promptly handled by this engineer organization under the direction of the chief of engineers in Washington. Simultaneously the chief may alert the entire nationwide organization and dispatch reinforcements to the disaster area. When the northeastern states were declared a disaster area the North Atlantic and New England divisions quickly organized for emergency construction operations to effect speedy recovery from the havoc wrought by the disaster. The chief of engineers Lieutenant General Samuel D. Sturgis Jr. at Washington telephoned his commands to the North Atlantic Division Chief at New York and the New England Division Chief at Boston. To the disaster area he dispatched 49 officers by plane from Fort Belvoir the engineer school and training center and to help handle the added duty of disaster relief within 24 hours 100 of the Corps civilian engineers were flown in from division and district headquarters in the middle west and the far west. About 50 field officers were immediately set up in the disaster area and additional reinforcements sent as needed. Throughout the disaster area local contractors have been given immediate assignments. More than 500 contracts were spot negotiated involving total cost of several million dollars. Engineers checked the work as it proceeded and engineer experts in soil mechanics made field tests for pervious and impervious material to be used in dykes levies and fells. Heavy equipment played a dominant part in the miracle of rehabilitation. It was essential in the rapid moving of mountains of earth and rock blocking the avenues of recovery. More than 1,200 pieces of heavy equipment were being employed simultaneously in the flood area under contract. Each type of equipment had its special use and all types were employed in this vast labor of repair and restoration. Emergency repair of public utilities was a desperate need. The army engineers were charged with the immediate restoration of sewers and water mains. At the forks of the Lehigh and the Delaware where the flood crested shortly after midnight August 19th debris piled against the Northampton Bridge damming the deluge momentarily. Then the million ton force of the flood burst through. That was the story for scores of bridges. The clock was stopped later in the morning of August 19th by the watery fingers of Connecticut's Nagatuck River. All Connecticut was in the major disaster area. Down the Nagatuck came the towering wall of water which contributed so greatly to the state's toll of death and damage. The raging river picked up rocks and rubble and flung them everywhere. A measure of the flood's power. Heavy railroad rails bent and twisted by the force of water-borne debris thrust against them with a giant strike. And boxcars lifted up and smashed against nearby buildings. Winstead stood in the flood channel of the raging Mad River. It was rivaled only by Putnam as a place of destruction and suffering. A large segment of the town was swept away. At Putnam alone, 2,000 were homeless. In this factory, magnesium was processed. Flood, fire and explosions contributed to total destruction. Here the Quinnibog River carved a new channel through a railway cut. The engineers put the river back in its bed. Also in the Quinnibog River Valley at the old Massachusetts town of Southbridge, destruction temporarily drowned out the entire economy. But no flood could dampen the tough Yankee spirit of self-help. Their homes might be gone, but their courage was still there. America pays homage to their nobility of spirit. For those who still had houses, house cleaning, after the torrent had wiped its muddy feet on the rug, volunteer civil defense workers continued to battle for their townspeople. Promptly, leaders of cities and states had initiated practical plans for aiding families suddenly made homeless and jobless. Bailey bridges continued to arrive. As soon as the flood emergency became apparent, the Army engineers had started moving 13 carloads of Baileys from their huge stockpile in Marion, Ohio to railroad yards giving access to the flood area. Trucks were waiting to haul the bridges to the road ends. Food contamination and its threat of disease germs and insect carriers was a menace handled by civil defense workers. The necessary cleaning out of flooded stores and shops added to the task of sanitation. Sprinkler tank trucks were sent through many towns by the engineers to spray disinfectant on the piles of refuse. But here, teenagers volunteered to spray contaminated material with a DDT solution. No flags are waving, but this is the American spirit in action. Most floods are followed by an epidemic of disease, but the alert people of the area denied Diane that second victory. Restoration of the normal flow of community life went on rapidly. The flood had coursed through this street and store, leaving eight feet of rock and rubble. Within a few days, street and store were returning to life and living. This avenue of wreck and rack was in a short time back in business. And here, where cranes rattled and swung, a traffic director soon was required. As you look over the scenes of vast desolation, you ask yourself, is this a first time for these cities and peoples? This tragic story of flood and devastation and death, has it ever happened before? Yes. In 1938, this was the Nagata and the Lehigh and the Quinnabog and the Connecticut. Man's memory is so short. Loss and devastation and death. This was Hartford, Connecticut in 1938. This was the Connecticut River in Hartford. This, too, was Hartford in 1938. And this was the 1938 fashion in Hartford. Look closely at Hartford streets in 1938. Compare them to Hartford streets in 1955. Yes, 1955, when Diane had come and gone, leaving Hartford dry, serene undamaged. What magic brought this about? No magic at all. Just plain common sense. Flood control construction. Since 1938, Congress has authorized a $300 million flood control program for New England. This flood wall built by the Corps of Engineers at a cost of $11 million was a part of that program. In 1955, it saved Hartford twice its cost in property damage. Under the same authorization, this flood control dam was built on the Westfield River, a tributary of the Connecticut. During Diane, it largely controlled the Westfield and diminished flood stages along the entire Connecticut. As part of the same program, this dam was constructed above Willamantic. In the great Diane storm, it reduced flood stages there and downstream on the Chautucket and Thames rivers. These dams stand dry until a record downpour threatens. Then, the control gates are closed and the reservoirs fill with billions of gallons, which otherwise would pour into the swollen streams and build them to raging floods. With the emergency pass, the gates are opened and the impounded waters drain away. But man's memory is short and five-sixth of the authorized $300 million program has not taken form in flood control works. The unbuilt dams, levees, and flood walls would have reduced the damage, might have saved lives, even in such a flood as Diane. The plans for watershed development to contain flood waters and protect the cities and peoples from destruction and death remain largely uncompleted. And the flood control plans in many other areas of our nation are also largely uncompleted. The nation's rivers can be controlled. Remember the 1927 flood on the Mississippi? Remember the 37 flood on the Ohio? Remember the 51 and 52 floods on the Missouri? In the wake of the rampages of these wild rivers, the engineers' great earth dams on the Missouri, like Fort Peck and Garrison, and Fort Randall rise to harness the big muddy and tame its periodic overflows. The levee system on the Mississippi and the dams on its tributaries have contained the father of waters. These engineering works are man's answer to nature's wrath. And our army's engineers are a part of the great team dedicated to the unending fight for flood control and the development of our river basins for America's security and prosperity. But without this constructive work, we must continue to face tragedy, destruction, and heartbreak. Yet with the passage of time, the memory of raging waters fades and is forgotten. Must man's memory continue to be so short? As you have seen, the Army Corps of Engineers have done much for our country. And we'll do so much more if given the go-ahead signal. It does seem strange that we Americans who enjoy so many blessings could enjoy so many more if only we took thought of past disasters and planned ahead to control them in the future. Truly, our memory need not be so short. This is Sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us again next week for another look at the Big Picture. The Big Picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the Army at home and overseas produced by the Signal Corps Pictorial Center, presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station. You too can be an important part of the Big Picture. You can proudly serve with the best equipped, the best trained, the best fighting team in the world today, the United States Army.