Seventy years ago, the state of Connecticut and the town of Granby experienced the worst flood in its history. Yes, the 1936 and 1938 floods were bad, but the flood of 1955 topped them all. What made the flood of 1955 so much worse were two hurricanes, Connie on Aug. 10, and eight days later, Diane. They crushed Granby and the state.
The summer of 1955 had been hot, and the month of July was one of the hottest on record. When Connie came up the coast and dumped eight inches of rain on Connecticut, it appeared to be a welcome relief from such a hot summer. Eight days later Diane came up the coast and the rain did not stop.
“In the morning it really rained,” Edna Messenger wrote in a letter to her children, Polly and Bruce. “Hartford had over two inches of rain an hour and we got much more. The water just poured in streams from the hills and ran down the road like a brook. By afternoon our road was washed at the top of the hill so we could just about crawl over it with the car and a deep gully was washed on the left side as you go down the hill.” Messenger later describes in her letter, “We went to bed about 10 p.m. and slept fitfully until 2 a.m. There was such a downpour that I got up and got dressed. We could hear the big brook, our little brook and we had a torrent pouring down the old road, so the noise was terrifying.”
Diane dropped anywhere from 14 to 22 inches of rain on an already saturated ground. Brooks swelled into raging torrents, tearing out bridges and roads. David Hildreth, writing in the September 2005 Drummer, recalled how the town became an “island.” With bridges gone and roads under water, no one could get in or out of Granby center.
Route 9, now Route 189, was washed out near Shaw’s Garage. The Silver Street Bridge and the Goddard’s Craig Mill were obliterated. Parts of East Street disappeared underwater. Salmon Brook Street flooded so badly that townspeople had to be reached by boat near the entrance to the McLean Refuge. Down Hartford Avenue toward Tariffville, three more bridges gave way. For five days, Granby stood alone. The two people to get out were Bill and Jane Ann Pease who traveled a circuitous route through East Granby and Windsor to the hospital to deliver their first child, Martha.
Chief Constable Harrison “Two-Gun” Hotchkiss stepped up to lead Granby through the emergency. With 10 assistants, he stationed men at impassable roads to keep travelers safe and worked side-by-side with the Lost Acres Fire Department to coordinate rescues. With phone lines dead and electricity out, Rathburn Griffin, a ham radio operator, kept the town informed of weather reports and news from surrounding towns.
The National Guard soon arrived to keep people from looting, but also to save lives. They flew helicopters over isolated farms and used the baseball field behind South Congregational Church to land and drop off food for people as well as feed and grain for the livestock. Granby’s then resident physicians, Dr. Herman Edelberg and his wife, administered typhoid shots as well as tested water supplies. The National Guard built temporary “Bailey” bridges, so Granby citizens could leave town and get back to work.
Two families, the Bigelows and the Johnsons, lost their homes. Relief funds were organized to help them rebuild. Yet amid the destruction, Granby counted itself lucky as no lives were lost. The story was much different for other towns. In Unionville, 15 people, including two children, were killed and two lives were lost in East Granby.
Sixty days later, in October, another storm dropped 11 inches of rain on Granby and nearly wiped out many of the bridges that were replaced from the August storms. Fortunately, town people were resilient and Granby got through that storm too.
To learn more about Granby during the flood of 1955, join the Salmon Brook Historical Society by calling 860-653-9713 or visit online at salmonbrookhistoricalsociety.com
To learn more about Granby history, take a tour of the Salmon Brook Historical Society on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. Sept. 28 is the last tour of the season for the Aaron Draper Shattuck exhibition, which is also from 2 to 4 p.m.