A fire three months after the flood engulfed Vanport buildings that had been piled together. (Oregonian)

Fire Capt. Robert O. English couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"I ran back outside and saw Fire Station No. 3 floating down the street, the water pouring in, people running and screaming," he would write later. "I then looked up the street and saw the second wall of water coming down and whole units, buildings, floating toward me ... I was knocked down by a refrigerator that was floating by in the swift current."

English, like everyone else in Vanport City on May 30, 1948, was ill-prepared for that wall of water.

Before dawn on Memorial Day 70 years ago, as the swollen Columbia River heaved on the perimeter, local officials had delivered notices throughout the sprawling development north of downtown Portland.

"Barring unforeseen developments," the notice said, "Vanport is safe."

Those unforeseen developments developed within hours of the message's arrival under residents' doors. The makeshift railroad dike protecting the floodplain from Smith Lake cracked and then gave way shortly after 4 p.m. Water crashed down on the community, giving many residents just minutes to run for their lives. People formed human chains to help each other reach safety.

But Vanport wasn't just flooded -- it was washed into oblivion, wiped from the map.

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Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser had built the unincorporated Vanport City, originally called "Kaiserville," during the early days of World War II to house the thousands of people who were pouring into Portland to work in his shipyards. The massive housing project was supposed to be temporary, but the flimsy buildings lived on after the war thanks to an ongoing dearth of affordable residences in the area -- especially for African-Americans, who were kept out of many Rose City neighborhoods through the discriminatory practice known as redlining.

"The consensus of opinion seems to be," wrote the Oregon Journal in 1947, "... that as long as over 20,000 people can find no other place to go, Vanport will continue to operate whether Portland likes it or not."

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Mother Nature had other ideas. The Flood of '48, the result of an unusually wet winter followed by a warm spring, showcased the shortcomings of the region's services and planning -- and, of course, it made all of Vanport's residents suddenly homeless, highlighting the limited housing options for many of them in the area.

It also helped create modern Portland. President Harry Truman toured the ruins of Vanport and declared that Congress would "pass a program under which these disastrous floods will never happen again." And the results of the deluge, both physical and social, led some Portlanders to take a hard look at their community and themselves -- and to start thinking in fresh ways about what the city needed to do to become a thriving, forward-looking metropolis. Vanport's demise started something new.

Below, Vanport City by the numbers:

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Rodney Reed

72,000

Approximate number of workers who came to Portland during World War II to work in the shipyards. There wasn't nearly enough housing for them, leading to the creation of Vanport City.

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42,000

Estimated number of workers and their families living in Vanport at the peak of its population during the war.

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Beth Nakamura/Photo courtesy Vanport Mosaic Festival

18,500

Approximate population of Vanport in May 1948, about 6,300 of whom were African-American.

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Vanport residents line up to vote during World War II.

9,942

Number of residential units built in Vanport in 1942-43. 484 row houses were later added in East Vanport.

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Vanport City in 1945.

6,000

Number of residential units Kaiser originally announced he would build on the Columbia River floodplain.

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Jantzen Beach Amusement Park partly under water during the 1948 Flood.

650

Blocks in Portland proper swamped by the 1948 flood. A city resident reportedly caught a 15-pound steelhead in downtown's Union Station.

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The dining room for shipyard executives during the war became Vanport College's bookstore.

648

Number of acres, in the low-lying area where Portland's Delta Park now is, that Kaiser turned into the city of Vanport.

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100

Estimated cost, in millions of dollars, of damage caused by the Flood of '48.

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Vanport residents walk along North Denver Avenue to escape the flood.

31

Number of feet high that the Columbia River reached during the flood. This was more than 3 feet over the top of area levees.

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A street in Vanport.

27

The number of Kaiser ship orders the U.S. Navy canceled on August 15, 1945, after it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Many Kaiser shipyard workers soon began to move out of Vanport City.

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The 1948 flood completely destroyed the city.

26

Cost, in millions of dollars, of building the Vanport housing project. Construction began in the fall of 1942, with the first residents moving in three months later.

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Portlanders mobilized within an hour of the dike breaking to provide food and other help for Vanport residents.

15

Number of feet Vanport sat below the levels of the Columbia River and Smith Lake.

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Vanport deputy sheriffs place the shrouded corpse of a 11-month-old girl on a mattress to await arrival of the coroner.

15

Confirmed deaths directly connected to the May 1948 Vanport deluge. Some survivors believe the real number is much higher.

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12

Number of days after the levees broke when President Harry Truman arrived in Vanport to see the damage for himself. "It's just as bad as I thought it was," he said. "I wanted to take a look at it because then you know more about it."

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10

Approximate height, in feet, of waves that crashed down on Vanport when the dikes gave way.

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2

City population rank of Vanport at its wartime peak, behind only Portland in the state.

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-- Douglas Perry

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