Good Samaritans responded by the thousands in wake of historic flood

ALBANY — In the aftermath of the Flood of ‘94 in southwest Georgia, Albany and its neighbors were in the hearts and minds of people across the country, and thousands of them showed up to help clean up the mess.

More than 30,000 volunteers worked in Albany in the early weeks after the swollen Flint River crested and water receded.

“One of the first was a Connecticut man who called and wanted to help,” said Judy Bowles, executive director of Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful and who oversaw the volunteer efforts. “The city manager and mayor asked everybody that wanted to volunteer or needed volunteers to call Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful. Keep Albany-Dougherty County Beautiful devised a system by which busloads of people would come in.”

The 1994 flood was like no other seen in the region and it flooded homes and businesses as much as a half-mile away from the river in some places. Residents in houses along creeks also saw water rise into their homes during flash flooding that resulted from torrential rainfall attributed to Tropical Storm Alberto.

An estimated 9,200 residences were damaged in Dougherty County alone, with 23,000 people losing their homes.

Most of the volunteers who showed up to help were from other parts of Georgia and other states because nearly everyone local was affected in some way by the flood, Bowles said.

The volunteers cleaned out the interiors of houses that had been inundated with water.

“They gutted houses,” Bowles said. “They literally took houses back to 2-by-4s so that only the frame was left intact.”

“The (flood) water was contaminated so you had to go back to the 2-by-4s.”

Carpet and refrigerators that had been covered with water also had to be removed from homes.

“You had contaminated water that sat for over two weeks in places,” Bowles said. “We could not send volunteers until the water receded and we had dried out.”

The volunteers wore protective clothing that included hard-soled shoes, gloves and masks. They also were given a tetanus booster shot.

“They had to be self-contained,” Bowles said. “All the hotels and motels were full.”

Bowles directed the relief effort from the downtown fire station because her own office on Newton Road had been flooded. The response was so great that five operators were each manning a phone to take calls from those who wanted to help.

“My office coordinated 33,000 volunteers in a five-week period,” Bowles said. “People who came like that, it usually was because they had been affected by a disaster, and it made them want to reach out and help people who had been affected by a disaster.”