The watery deluge of '97 pounded home a lesson for Tristate communities: The best way to prevent damage from floods is to move away from the water.
In the year since the slow-rising Ohio River seeped into southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky towns, and the flash-flood waters of the Licking River roared into Pendleton County, the mind-set of flood recovery has changed.
People are rebuilding communities, but no one is talking about digging new reservoirs to hold seasonal spring runoff or building new floodwalls to move the danger farther downstream.
The theme of recovery from the 1997 disaster is ''mitigation,'' attempts to make the effects of floods less severe.
''Reducing property damage is not impossible,'' said Don Armstrong, Kentucky's Disaster and Emergency Services spokesman. ''Preventing it is.''
In Pendleton County, three new precipitation gauges will help the National Weather Service and emergency officials monitor and predict Licking River flood stages. This means earlier warnings for residents.
Falmouth and Melbourne, Ky., are participating in home buyout programs while creating new planning and zoning regulations for floodplain development. In Ohio, New Richmond, parts of Cincinnati, Manchester and Neville are doing the same.
Last year's floods exerted the most damage where mitigation was least - inland on myriad Adams County creeks and along the Licking River at Falmouth. Mobile homes floated off, houses and shops were inundated, bridges slumped and roads eroded.
In southern Ohio, damage to private and public property reached an estimated $180 million. In Northern Kentucky, it was $70 million, and in Southeastern Indiana, it was $4 million.
Twenty-four people died.
Officials now say that the next time a flood hits, damage will be less and communities will be better prepared.
It's a trend across the country.
In Valmeyer, Ill., plagued by recurrent flooding, officials moved the entire town to higher ground in 1993. Soldiers Grove, Wis., relocated in the 1970s.
These towns - along with Falmouth, New Richmond and other communities - are characterized by older homes built near a river's edge, the types of neighborhoods often hardest hit by a flood.
''There are always stories of bravery and hardiness in survivors. 'We will rebuild. We will go on,' '' said Marya Morris, a planner with the American Planning Association and author of Subdivision Design in Flood Hazard Areas.
''People are reluctant to talk about the foolishness of it all,'' she said. ''But I think there's a realization now that financially it just doesn't make sense to continue to build where we know disaster will strike. Where the water has been, it will be again.''
That's why the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is encouraging communities to move homes to higher ground and working to persuade Congress to broaden funding for hazard mitigation.
''It's elevate or move,'' said Linda Sacia, a FEMA spokeswoman in Chicago. ''It is the best solution: Get people out of the floodplain.''
Hazard mitigation is being embraced as the primary way to combat floods, from the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA down to city officials. The strategy often involves a home buyout program, or constructing levees and buying flood insurance. But mitigation also means creating new standards for floodplain development. That's the tough part.
In her study of recovery efforts in flood areas, Ms. Morris found that residents recovering from a flood in an older community often push for flood-prevention devices because they fear restrictions that come with land-use planning.
Falmouth City Manager Steve Hasson is working to teach residents that planning is for the public good.
''The city really needs to move forward, but there's a real fear about this,'' Mr. Hasson said. ''On its face, it seems like planning is 'Big Brother.' What I want to do is turn the sock inside out and say planning is a means of prevention. It insures the integrity of whatever you own.''
Falmouth has never had planning and zoning regulations or a building code. Pendleton County's record isn't any better. Mr. Hasson and city council are creating those documents, working with county officials on a comprehensive land-use plan. At the same time, Falmouth is coordinating the buyout of nearly 70 homes.
THEN: A view, facing east, of downtown Cincinnati and the Ohio River during the flood. The river crested at 64.7 feet, its highest mark since 1964.
NOW: The downtown riverfront a year later, where land is being prepared for construction of a new Bengals stadium.
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Ninety-seven homes were approved for purchase in a $3.3 million buyout package. But 27 homeowners have declined, saying the process is taking too long.
Dorothy Cookendorfer's home is the only one occupied on Rigg Street. But she doesn't care.
Mrs. Cookendorfer, 80, was the first resident to move back in, three months after the flood. ''It's my home,'' Mrs. Cookendorfer said. ''It always will be.'' When the weather allows, she sits on her porch swing, hoping a neighbor might stop by, but most of them aren't coming back.
Her white stucco house stands amid a row of dilapidated houses waiting to be torn down. When the buyout is complete, her home will be surrounded by greenspace.
The scene is similar in Adams County, where - given the inability or unwillingness of many residents to make their homes more flood-resistant - flood-mitigation planners are discussing a countywide land-use plan. They hope the Nature Conservancy, a significant landowner in Adams County, will provide a grant to hire a planner.
Steven Z. Willson, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's district conservationist in West Union, said that only Manchester and Winchester have zoning that might reduce potential damage in the next flood. Talk of zoning elsewhere in Adams County often evokes strong opposition.
But Adams County some residents have had enough.
Last year's flood was one too many for Roberta and Eugene Kitchen. They thought they were flood-proof, but rising Churn Creek and water rushing down nearby foothills surprised them on Saturday, March 1.
''When you look and see a refrigerator floating down off a hill, you know there's a lot of water,'' Mrs. Kitchen recalled.
They waded through waist-deep water to safety and, in a sense, never looked back.
The Kitchens had no flood insurance. There would be no federal buyout program in their community of Blue Creek. Their mobile home was too heavily damaged for a FEMA repair grant. And their incomes were too high for a FEMA last-resort grant.
So, while FEMA paid three months' rent, the Kitchens found and bought a hilltop house in nearby Lynx with a $39,900 low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration.
In Cincinnati's eastern neighborhoods, city officials have paid $110,000 to buy and demolish 31 riverside residences. The land probably will become part of the city's recreation system, connecting the Turkey Ridge playground and the Schmidt ballfields, said Bill Langevin, director of buildings and inspections and Cincinnati's floodplain administrator.
Clermont County officials as well as those in New Richmond and Neville are looking at $4.5 million in flood mitigation projects, said Nancy Dragani, spokeswoman for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
In New Richmond, village officials are using $1.2 million in federal mitigation money to buy 25 to 30 flood-damaged homes in the Ohio River floodplain. Vacant lots are scattered around the historic village's core, where officials have bought and demolished nine structures so far.
New housing is going up in the rest of the 6 1/2-square-mile village limits - land east of U.S. 52, up in the hills and out of the river's reach - including a 200-home subdivision, Riverview Bluffs.
For floodplain-dwelling New Richmond residents not participating in a buyout, mitigation means elevating homes. Since the '97 flood, three homes have been built in New Richmond's floodplain, with the living quarters 10 feet off the ground atop flood-hardy garages.
And New Richmond building owners now know, to the inch, when water will reach the first floor, based on a computer study of a building's elevation and the river's climb up a flood gauge. The when-the-river-reaches-you number now is ''like part of their address,'' Village Administrator David Kennedy said.
Mary and Ken McElfresh's Washington Street house in New Richmond, more than a century old and their home for 36 years - was soaked by 4 feet of water in '97 and 5 1/2 feet in the '64 flood. The great '37 flood covered the roof of the two-story house.
Though the New Richmond natives won't move, they bought their first flood-insurance policy this year.
''We're a little more prepared,'' Mrs. McElfresh said. ''I guess we're just old river rats.''
Lessons learned
Decades ago, floodwalls and dams were more feasible projects. If a city were willing to make the financial sacrifice, it could be guaranteed a dry berth in the height of a flood.
Maysville, Ky., took advantage of public and federal support in the 1950s, raising taxes to build a floodwall. It worked.
When the March flood hit, Maysville was virtually untouched. Transportation and schools were open, and life continued as normal. The high water caused some mudslides behind the floodwall on the river side and along marina property, but no homes were damaged and no roads closed.
The damage total was $360,000, and most of that did not qualify for FEMA assistance, City Manager Dennis Redmond said. The city accepts that as a reality, but Mr. Redmond said he and other officials wonder whether other cities affected by the flood are doing anything to prevent damage.
''All of us that have any experience in planning and zoning and flood restrictions had great anticipation that building codes would be enforced to the maximum and people paid by FEMA or other agencies would have to move their homes to higher ground,'' Mr. Redmond said. ''We don't know what's really happening. In the spring of 2002, when we have another one of these, are we going to be using taxpayers' money to bail them out again?''
Enquirer reporters Lisa Donovan, Ben L. Kaufman and Christine Wolff contributed to this story.
Today's report
Flooding by the numbers
Disaster strikes: Timeline
Flood assistance by county
Putting their lives back together
The Flood of '97
COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
DAILY STORIES
140 COLOR PHOTOS
