The 56th anniversary of the Flood of 1955 is this week.
The flood — which started late on the evening of Aug. 18 and became a disaster Aug. 19 — devastated the Naugatuck Valley, and killed almost 90 people across the state. Connecticut suffered millions of dollars in property damage.
The flood has been memorialized in video documentaries, magazines, and newspaper articles.
And, as it turns out, a radio documentary produced by Jubilee Records featuring reports from WAVZ radio in New Haven.
Valley Indy reader Chad Jansen, 24, brought in an copy of the “Flood of ’55” record this week and allowed the audio from the record to be uploaded to YouTube.
The record belongs to Derek Jansen, Chad’s brother.
The “Flood of ’55” can be replayed in four parts by playing the videos within this story.
Note: Portions of Part 3 and Part 4 focus specifically on Seymour, Derby and Ansonia. They include interviews with police chiefs in Ansonia and Derby and the former mayor of Ansonia.
Voices heard on the record from New Haven’s WAVZ include:
- Tiny Markle, the program director and disc jockey
- George Lezotte, a radio reporter who did interviews from the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury
- Daniel W. Kops, the station’s vice-president and general manager who wrote the script
- George Phillips, the station’s news editor, who related information from the field to the public. Phone service during the flood was virtually non-existent.
Shelton’s Chad Jansen and the Valley Indy staff react to the recordings after hearing them for the first time:
