You either recall it yourself, or you’ve heard the stories.
The Flood of 1955 tore up the Naugatuck Valley.
Fifty-six years later, the flood is still very present in the minds of the Valley residents.
I first started hearing stories about the flood when I became a reporter in Seymour for the Waterbury Republican American in 2006.
Town officials would refer to the flood during routine meetings. Old men hanging out at Rogol’s store on Main Street would describe the water pouring into homes and storefronts.
The stories are everywhere.
The water level is marked out with a line drawn on the wall of the Ansonia Senior Center. General Muffler auto body shop in Ansonia has pictures of the flood hanging on the wall in the waiting room.
I was struck by the shared experience, and the long-term dedication to its memory.
So when it came time to chose a topic for my master’s thesis capstone project at Quinnipiac University, I decided to detail the flood in videos and interactive stories.
I felt compelled to take the old barber shop stories and yellowing newspaper clippings and turn them into a digital recording of the event, and its effects on the community.
Thus, I began researching the Flood of 1955 this summer.
I mentioned the task in a past podcast — with impressive results.
Joseph Brady of Ansonia brought old photo albums from the flood to the Ansonia Senior Center to share with me. His photos can be seen in the Flickr gallery within this story.
Melanie Petro of Shelton offered to lend me a copy of the Flood of 1955 magazine produced by the Evening Sentinel.
Readers started e‑mailing their experiences, and offered to be interviewed for the project.
We even had a reader, Chad Jansen of Shelton, bring in a record with an audio documentary from the flood. Click here to view a story about that recording, and to listen to it.
In my research, I’ve also found some great resources online about the Flood of 1955, which I would like to share.
- The Hartford Courant 50th anniversary package.
- The Connecticut State Library Flood of 1955 page.
- ‘The Lost‘ — a list of casualties from the Flood, as compiled by Jeanne LeBlanc while she was at the Hartford Courant.
- National Weather Service Flood of 1955 page.
- Waterbury Time Machine, a website about Waterbury history includes a page dedicated to flood memories, photos and videos.
- “Even The Dead Were Torn From Their Graves“ — a Sunday Herald article in a Flood of 1955 supplement.
- The Connecticut Flood Recovery Committee Report, also inserted at the end of this article.
