"Dikes are Safe at Present": The 1948 Columbia River Flood and the Destruction of Vanport

An aerial view, looking south toward Portland, of the broken dike that let the river into Vanport.

"The first, six-foot break soon widened to five hundred feet.  A ten-foot wall of water rushed through, sending spray fifty feet high as it met the waters of the low-lying sloughs.  The sloughs filled in about forty minutes.  The water then rose throughout the [Vanport housing] project, reaching to the second floor of the apartment buildings.  In a few hours, the city was dead."  (Gordon B. Dodds, The College That Would Not Die: The First Fifty Years of Portland State University)