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Posted on Mon, Apr. 27, 2009

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1918 flu killed 12,000 in state

The Wichita Eagle

This is one in a series of vignettes celebrating Kansas history. The series' name comes from the state motto, Ad astra per aspera: "To the stars through difficulties."

BY BECCY TANNER

Ninety-one years ago, the world's deadliest outbreak of influenza began one March day in Kansas.

At Fort Riley, troops all over the Midwest were preparing to be shipped to France to fight in World War I.

Besides the men, the military fort also teemed with horses and mules.

Each month the animals created 9,000 tons of manure, and piles of it were burned daily.

The morning of March 9, 1918, would be no exception to the fort's daily practice of burning manure.

As a storm blew through, the ashes of burned manure mixed with the flying dust.

Coughing and sneezing, men huddled in makeshift buildings at Camp Funston, a subdivision of the base.

Less than 48 hours later, a company cook named Albert Gitchell came down with a bad cough, fever, severe sore throat, headache and muscular pains.

By noon, 107 patients with the same symptoms had checked into the base hospital.

By the end of the week, 500 cases were recorded, 48 resulting in death. The pandemic had begun.

By the time it was over, it had killed at least 20 million worldwide.

Because there were no methods of tracking diseases at that time, it's hard to trace exactly what happened next and why the virus grew so deadly so quickly.

But it spread when many of the men still recovering from the first wave at Fort Riley shipped to France. With them went the horses and mules and influenza.

Soon, the virus spread along trade routes and shipping lines.

No one was certain what had caused it.

Whatever the case, returning soldiers from World War I brought the second wave of the disease back to their home countries.

It affected the young more than the elderly. It was a flu like no one had seen before.

It frightened everyone.

When this flu killed, it killed alarmingly quickly, within hours after a victim began showing symptoms.

It was most commonly known as the Spanish Influenza. Some nicknamed it the "Spanish Lady." Old-timers called it "the grippe." German soldiers called it "Flanders Fever."

One in 4 Americans caught it, and more than 12,000 Kansans died of it or its complications.

Today you can still see signs of the pandemic: Most Kansas cemeteries hold victims of the 1918 flu.