history -- about the holocaust, there is the scene in poland. the camp was in the distance. the gas chambers. they interviewed all of these people -- no, they did not smell anything, they did not know anything. the great olfactory collapse in poland. time, and as i said for all of the other papers, i well, ane qualifies as good paper is where you can't answer all the questions. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] are watching american history tv, 48 hours of american history programming on c-span3. follow us on twitter, @cspanhistory, to keep up with their schedule and the latest history news. >> this year c-span is touring

cities across the country looking at local history. up next, our visit to des moines, iowa. watchingbuilt at the confluence

des moines and the raccoon rivers. the geography, if you will, everything feeds there. of the water at the central part of the state. flooding in iowa is not all that uncommon. when you take a look at the snowpack, these snow melt, if you will. usually some rain showers, some things like that. it is not that unusual to get low land flooding, maybe serious flooding. scenario, so to speak, for 1993 goes back to even 1992 in the fall, and the fact that we were getting a lot of snow in the winter months. a lot of rain in the spring.

everything was getting saturated. snow andhave a lot of maybe the ground is still frozen, that water does not saturate the ground. that river just runs downstream, so to speak. you have this gradual buildup of various forms of moisture, snow melt and rain that is starting to fill up the rivers, starting to fill up the lakes and the reservoirs. it was not just in iowa. it was throughout the midwest, as i recall. everything was just starting to fill up. we did not have anywhere to go. i mean, the mississippi river was getting high. the missouri river was getting high. the des moines river and the other rivers were running high. that was not necessarily a bad thing. then we started having bad things.

the reservoirs started to fill up. then we started having really intense pockets of rainstorms. to use the old movie title, it was the perfect storm for something like this to happen. bad.ew the flooding was we did not know how bad it was going to be. i happen to be at a dinner that night. the government was also at that dinner. i got messages from the newsroom. they were saying, hey, they have cancel the grand prix, which is a car race through des moines. i went to the governor. i said that, this is a pretty big event for the city of des moines, for the city of iowa. they were concerned about the water level over the bridges.

managementergency operations set up over in the hoover building. operationut into immediately, friday and saturday, when things were getting serious. asked, who is maybe the focal point person in all of who was theleman director of the des moines waterworks. -- ked him, what are we going to do? >> we lost the battle of keeping the raccoon river out of the treatment land. as a result of the rise, the river flowed into the treatment plant and actually submerged the treatment plant. >> i will be honest with you, when you hear that, when i first heard that, we have lost our water. it is kind of like losing your electricity.

we will do without it and then we will get it back. different withly water. the whole system is contaminated. it is not like you could light a candle or a lantern or something when the electricity goes out. when your water goes out, there is no water in your pipes, there is no water in your bathtub. there is no water in your house. all of a sudden it starts to sink in. i told dr. mcmullen. this is really bad, isn't it? he said, yeah, it is going to be really, really bad. you will have 200,000 people who do not have water. so, mcmullen became the person on whom everything was focused. he led the charge to get the water back on.

the city itself had a lot of flooding. in the area south of downtown. those were the areas you're familiar with. but the real impact was the loss of water. the president came. about a weekn iowa before, as i recall. he was in the mississippi in davenport. when the moyne got hit and lost -- when des moines got hit and there were some very touching moments, i think for the president where people ofe up and he heard stories what they had lost. there was one lady in particular think it wasi something like i can't take it anymore. it was a sincere moment. it was not politically staged or anything like that. i think that affected him. he told me he was very impressed by what he saw going on there,

what he saw going on in the community. one of the things that impressed me more than anything else -- we did not have water. the national guard would truck water in in these big huge tanker trucks. kind of like you see driving down the highway, hauling other fluids like gasoline, things like that. these were big, huge tanker trucks. they would park the truck at a high school or a shopping mall, and people would come up with their bottles and whatnot. what i recall more than anything else was how these areas of water distribution became like town squares 150 years ago. people would meet there. neighbors would get together. they would exchange news. they would talk about what was going on in their neighborhoods, and other parts of the city. and they did not just come for water. certainly many of them did, but a lot of them would stick around for hours at a time, seeing

people, talking to people. at about 1:00, we were trying to bring online at little pump that was going to fill the system, that in breaking it up, it failed. the effort went into fixing -- des moines walker waterworks treatment plant. it looked like a war zone. huge helicopters flying in. the motors and pumps, things like this. the national guard helicopters throwing sandbags down onto levees and stuff. it was impressive. it was frightening in many ways, too, to see this happening in familiar places in your own city. it was downright scary. but it was also really, really impressive. kind of sandbag central, if you will, was fluid drive could notread they

save the waterworks. the waterworks was all gone. all underwater at that time. kind of particular area became sandbag central. and people would just show up there for days and days on end. >> believe it or not, we have made it. water from the cap, safe for all consumption. babies, dogs, the elderly and the young. >> it is one of the greatest moments when l.d. mcmullen and announced to the people we were getting our water back. and then about a week later we could drink our water. there were zones -- the city was divided up into zones, zone a, zone b, things like this. zone eight could do this at this time on this day. zone b would do this at this time on this day. and eventually they would bring the whole thing back online. i think there are a lot of people who have a lot more

respect for those rivers then maybe they did 21 years ago. it is not just a fearful type of respect, but also an admirable respect, to you what. lifeblood,s are the the veins, if you will, of the community. and now, the past 5, 10 years, the river is becoming a focal point of the city again. it is kind of getting back to, you know, maybe what the city ago or so, when the river was the reason we work here. >> find out where c-span's local content videos are going next online at www.c-span.org/loc alcontent.

you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. >> next, on "the civil war," stephen hood discusses his book on the life of confederate general john bell hood. writer, a descendent of the general, says that many of the general's these are clarified through the documents. this is about an hour and 45 minutes. >> thank you all for coming. in january.anta i'm going to be able to vote down year if i keep showing up. [laughter]