ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE

 

I was almost sure about the month and year. "Google," said I, was wrong on both. Later, when I looked at the dozens of pictures, stories, and some grainy videos, they brought back the images frozen in my mind. On February 04, 1970, the rain and wind started early. Until then, it had been a typically cold season. I was seventeen and not interested in the river's winter activities. Early that morning, I recalled the warm southwest wind as unusual; by mid-morning, it was blowing a gale. Miramichiers, by nature, are not easily stirred, and most people were happy to have a break from the bone-numbing cold, even if they had to contend with the high winds.
As we sat for supper, the local CBC station reported flooding in the provincial capital, Fredericton. That was usually a spring event and of little interest to folks in the Miramichi region. I was glad to get a break from the constant snow shovelling. After supper, I plodded through my homework, knowing my prospects of passing the year were bleak. The start of the school year, the previous September, coincided with the end of a roller-coaster relationship, leaving my self-esteem lower than my grades. Looking for an escape, I eagerly stowed the books and scribblers at eight o'clock and headed downstairs to watch " Bonanza." The famous Western offered an exciting alternative to my daily self - pity party and dull routine. The notion that my family's lives would be threatened in less than three hours was as fanciful as the Cartwright family riding up the main street of our village. Our home was less than a hundred feet from the Miramichi River. Flowing 250 km from the Atlantic Ocean, it transitions from a saltwater basin at Miramichi Bay to a freshwater river famous for salmon and bass fishing. 
A quarter of a mile from our house was Beaubear's Island. Its location is strategic, particularly in the spring, as ice flowing from two tributaries (Northwest and Southwest Miramichi) is divided, thus reducing the pressure on downriver settlements and other locations. At the southwestern tip of the island is a railway bridge. All trains travelling north from Nova Scotia to Quebec and beyond crossed at this point. The daily runs of those trains had become symphonies that lulled me to sleep through each season. On this night, I had a tough time getting to sleep. The neighbourhood dogs seemed especially agitated, with a lot of barking. Our cat (Ash), never one for showing agitation, had been wandering around whimpering. I fell into a restless slumber.
In sleep, our minds have a fantastic capacity to blend past events and actual conditions simultaneously. Something very different challenged my usual peaceful dream of the slow rumble train on the bridge. In my half-awake state, the sound took on an ominous tone that I heard and felt. I sat upright, trying to understand.
During the two previous days, almost 100 millimetres of rain had fallen. It was driven by hurricane-force winds peaking at ninety km per hour. I was hearing the breakup of two massive ice packs stretching over a distance of ninety kilometres. Ice from the southwest and northwest Miramichi tributaries was being pushed into the main river just four kilometres beyond home.
I jumped out of bed, pulling on my clothes as I ran downstairs. I peered outside, but could see nothing. As I sat in the kitchen pulling on my snow boots and jacket, the noise I faintly heard in my dreams had grown into a crescendo.
Opening the back porch door, I was thrown against the outside wall and struggled to breathe. The huge wind was now driving a full-out snowstorm. Crawling to the front of our house by holding onto the veranda railing, I saw two cars stopped in the middle of the street. They were pointed toward the river with high beams on. The blurred images remain imprinted on my mind and have been the source of random nightmares even after sixty years.
The effect of the immense amount of ice being released at once is a phenomenon called pressure ridging. Warm temperatures with heavy rain weaken the layers of ice. The increased river current causes the layers to move. That movement is impeded by the riverbed and the riverbanks. The results are pressure ridges. They grow in height and width until the force behind them is enough to cause movement. This continues as the jam is again caught up, and the cycle continues, building more destruction in its wake.
I heard but couldn't see anything until the vehicle lights provided glimpses of the glacial mass making its way down the river next to our home. Initially, my mind could not process it. First, I had to look up to see the mass. This meant it had to be over twenty meters above the road. This was later confirmed in media reports. The second clip in the surreal picture was trees, some full-length, sticking out randomly among the enormous slabs of ice. Most branches were sheared off like toothpicks. A third spectacle in this apocalyptic scene was the sudden end to the snowstorm and the wind. The abruptness contributed to the panicked atmosphere, as now there was only the cacophony of ice moving and timber with limbs fracturing somewhere in the ink-black night. 
More cars appeared as the news of the ice run spread through the village. I returned home, not wanting to join the rubber-necking spectacle. When I returned, the rest of the family was up and nervously peering out the windows. I shared the little I knew, being careful to avoid betraying my anxiety about what we might be facing. Mom said Dad was in the basement. I went down, wondering what he might be doing there. I was stunned to see a torrent of water shooting up from the basement floor. Again, my mind struggled to make sense of what was happening. Dad was standing on a piece of board, trying to slow the freezing water shooting up from a drainpipe. Suddenly, I realized the combined weight of the ice was forcing river water into our cellar. The drainpipe that led directly to the river was used in the spring to control runoff from heavy rain. As we surveyed the situation, the water was rising frighteningly. We needed to slow the flow rate and get it out before it ruined the furnace and flooded the cellar. Dad grabbed a length of pulpwood, quickly fired up the power saw, and cut it to about a foot. He sharpened an end and placed it at the mouth of the pipe. I hammered it in place as freezing water covered us. The upward force of the water made it pop out twice, but on the third try, it held. Our moment of success was brief, as we saw the water level had gone over the top of our boots. Working as a janitor at a small school with my mother, I recalled a sump pump. I left Dad standing by the drain plug, ready to knock it into place. I jumped in the family car and, in twenty minutes, was back with the pump and a length of hose. We hurriedly set it in place, wondering if it would work after years of sitting idle. The quiet hum of the motor and the feel of ice water in the hose were like a soothing balm as I felt my tense muscles relax slightly.
When I went outside to place the hose across the road, the thunderous noise had subsided, showing the ice run was slowing. More vehicles lined up along the road despite the cakes being even with the roadbed, a height of twenty - five feet from the river's usual level. It would be morning before we knew the full extent of the damage. Among the people gathered, I noticed my Uncle Earl. He worked with the provincial Natural Resources Department. He and another DNR employee tried to move people back, but were unsuccessful. We exchanged hellos, and I gave him a summary of our recent episode. He and I sat in the warmth of his truck as Earl recounted some of the news he was hearing on his government and police radios. Earl was a quiet and deliberate man, not given to overstatement. His account of what happened "upriver" left me speechless and heartbroken. Our situation paled in comparison.
Near the communities where the Miramichi River narrowed, over twenty -five houses, barns, camps, etc., were torn from their foundations. In several cases, families had only minutes to flee. Farmers along the fertile belt lost dozens of livestock that could not be rescued. They died a horrible death in the carnage. In Keenan siding, a community twenty miles from our home, a father drowned in his car as the bridge he was crossing was swept away in six meters of water. He was trying to reach his family when the brook, usually half a metre deep, surged.
Two bridges crossing the Miramichi were swept off their piers in the massive ice jams. Two other bridges were severely damaged, cutting entire communities off from outside help. 
Just below us, in the community of Newcastle, a large ice jam occurred at Morrissey Bridge. The top of the jam was reportedly at bridge level, with an estimated thickness of 12 to 15 metres. About a quarter of businesses were underwater, and the water supply was polluted. Earl was called back to the bridge as the threat of its destruction was growing.
I returned to our home to change my clothes and give Dad a break from the vigil he held, monitoring the pump and ensuring the drain plug was holding. It was about 4:30am when I realized how exhausted I was. To allow Dad and me to rest, I had my two younger sisters stand watch. I climbed into my bed and gratefully surrendered to sleep.
Nearby, heavy machinery woke me up. The pleasant, sunny day was a welcome relief from the literal and figurative darkness of the previous night. As I stumbled outside, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I saw the result of the disastrous events. The sea of ice had stopped a couple of hundred feet up the river. The island had probably saved us and many others along the front street. Acting as a natural divider, it split the jam into two sections, reducing the full energy force by half. I walked up the road, trying to absorb the scene before me. Cakes of ice between two and five meters thick were piled carelessly on each other. Interspersed between them were the trees I glimpsed last night. Most were splintered, but full-length trees up to thirty metres with roots attached were poking out of the mountain. The total height of the glacial structure itself was at least twenty meters in places.
Further up, I saw the remnants of a house sitting atop the ice. Curtains were visible in two windows, adding to the surreal setting. Down the street, the source of the heavy equipment noise was two giant loaders working in tandem to move a slab of ice almost the size of one loader.
Several days after the calamitous events, two vessels appeared below the Morrisey Bridge. Canadian Coast Guard Services (CCGS) Tupper and Wolfe. Their bright red livery contrasted sharply against the mountains of ice. They attracted a lot of attention as they plowed their way upstream toward the largest jams. To allow the ice field to flow freely in the river channel, the plan was to use icebreakers to break it up. The larger vessel, the Wolfe, would work downstream where the river widened, and the vessel would have room to manoeuvre. The Tupper, which was a regular visitor to the region, would work from the bridge up to our area. It was better suited to the narrower channel that ran parallel to our street. It was powered by a 3,500 hp diesel engine. Combined with its weight of 1,400 tons, it was well-suited for the job. The ship's draught was 4.2 metres. Draught is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull. The relatively small draught allowed the ship to manoeuvre freely with little danger of running aground in the 6.4 metre channel. Designed as a supply vessel and for handling large buoys, the Tupper was reinforced with steel plating for breaking ice. An additional feature was a 10-ton concrete block placed on the deck. It was attached by a steel cable to a crane. Breaking ice involves the vessel combining the inertia of its powerful engine with its weight to drive itself on top of an ice sheet. In conditions like those found in Miramichi, the concrete block is raised above deck level, and then the crane begins a slow pendulum motion. This causes the ship to displace even more weight as it settles lower. A simple but very effective tool.
As a seventeen-year-old, I was fascinated by the power of this beautiful ship as it laboriously went about its work. What made the scene even more surreal was watching it unfold from the riverbank, which was now twenty -five feet below this mighty powerhouse.
It would take days for the water to recede and weeks before the Miramichi region returned to something resembling normal. But it recovered, and there were more floods, and the people picked up the pieces from each occurrence because, as one of my older neighbours said, "What else is there to do? " This is our home, and we must be satisfied."