The flash flood of May 22–23, 1942 brought catastrophic destruction to Honesdale, Hawley, White Mills, and the Lackawaxen Valley after days of heavy rain and a cloudburst, and when a dam above Honesdale gave way, a ten-foot wall of water swept through the town, killing twenty-four people in Honesdale, Hawley, and White Mills, including twenty-two in Wayne County, and causing millions of dollars in damage. Homes, businesses, bridges, utilities, and whole sections of Honesdale were devastated, while emergency aid from the Red Cross, police, military units, health workers, utility crews, volunteers, and W.P.A. workers helped rescue, relieve, and begin rehabilitation. The disaster, later followed by the flood of August 1955, led to studies, public efforts, congressional authorization in 1948 under the Flood Control Act, and the eventual construction of Dyberry Dam and Prompton Dam. At the dedication of Dyberry Dam on August 19, 1959, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, a Honesdale native and Army Chief of Staff, said the dam would protect an area of Pennsylvania and people he had known all his life, praised the Army Corps of Engineers' role, and called the completed project both a safeguard for the community and a symbol of cooperative effort among private citizens, local and state government, and federal agencies.