Johnstown Flood

“ The people crowded out of their houses along the thickly settled streets awe-struck and wondering. No one knew the man, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On and on, at a deadly pace, he rode, and shrilly rang out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting, hurling, over-turning, crashing—annihilating the weak and the strong. It was the charge of the flood, wearing its coronet of ruin and devastation, which grew at every instant of its progress. ”

“ It is always “folks,” always “gone.” You heard it everywhere among the crowds that thronged the viaduct and looked down upon the ghastly twenty acres of unburied dead, from which dynamite was making a terrible exhumation of the corpses of two thousand mortals and five hundred houses. You heard it at the rope bridge, where the crowds waited the passage of the incessant file of empty coffins. You heard it upon the steep hillside beyond the valley of devastation, where the citizens of Johnstown had fled into the borough of Conemaugh for shelter. ”

“ All night long the crowd stood about the ruins of the bridge which had been swept away at Bolivar. The water rushed past with a roar, carrying with it parts of houses, furniture, and trees. No more living persons are being carried past. Watchers, with lanterns, remained along the banks until daybreak, when the first view of the awful devastation of the flood was witnessed. Along the bank lay the remnants of what had once been dwelling-houses and stores ”

“ The deadly silence that has prevailed throughout the town is ended, giving place to the shouts of hundreds of men pulling at ropes, and the crash of timbers and roofs as they pull wrecked buildings down or haul heaps of débris to pieces. Hundreds more are making an almost merry clang with pick and shovel as they clear away mud and gravel, opening ways on the lines of the old streets. Locomotives are puffing about, down into the heart of the town now, and the great whistle at the Cambria Iron Works blew for noon yesterday and to-day for the first time since the flood silenced it. ”

“ Johnstown, with its former population of ten thousand or thereabouts, was almost entirely swept away when the awful floods came, and many of the villages between that point and Nineveh are things of the past so far as life is concerned. Indeed the whole valley is a veritable Valley of the Shadow of Death.
So great was the crush of the wreckage, debris and dead bodies, at some points along the valley that dynamite had to be used, thus adding to the horror of the scene. ”

“ A flood of death swept down the Alleghany Mountains yesterday afternoon and last night. Almost the entire city of Johnstown is swimming about in the rushing, angry tide. Dead bodies are floating about in every direction, and almost every piece of movable timber is carrying from the doomed city a corpse of humanity, drifting with the raging waters. The disaster overtook Johnstown about six o'clock last evening. ”

“ Just below the bare plain where the business block of Johnstown stood, and above the stone arch bridge on which the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed the river, are seven acres of the wreckage of the flood. The horrors that have been enacted in that spot, the horrors that are seen there every hour, who can attempt to describe? Under and amid that mass of conglomerate rubbish are the remains of at least one thousand persons who died the most frightful of deaths. ”

“ It takes a whole family to locate the site of their friend’s house with any reasonable certainty.
“Wandering over this muddy plain one can realize something of what must have been the gigantic force of that vast whirlpool. It pressed upon the town like some huge millstone, weighing tens of thousands of tons and revolving with awful velocity, pounding to powder everything beneath. But the conception of the power of that horrible eddy of the flood must remain feeble until that sixty acres of burning débris is inspected. ”

“ For noise, there is heavy splashing of the Conemaugh over the rapids below the bridge, the petulant gasping of an unseen fire-engine, pumping water through the hose, and the even more rapid but greater puffing of the dynamo-engine that, mounted upon a flat car at one end of the bridge, furnishes electricity for the lights. There is little else heard. People who are yet about gather in little groups, and talk in low tones as they look over the dark, watchfire-beaconed gulf. Everybody in Johnstown looks over that gulf in every spare moment, day or night. ”

“ It is now a week since the flood, and Johnstown is a cross between a military camp and a new mining town, and is getting more so every day. It has all the unpleasant and disagreeable features of both, relieved by the pleasures of neither. Everywhere one goes soldiers are lounging about or standing guard on all roads leading into the city, and stop every one who cannot show a pass. There is a mass of tents down in the centre of the ruins, and others are scattered everywhere on every cleared space beside the railroad tracks and on the hills about. ”

“ There are so many more men than women among the living in Johnstown now, because there are so many more women than men among the dead. Of the bodies recovered there are at least two women for every man. Besides the fact that their natural weakness made them an easier prey to the flood, the hour at which the disaster came was one when the women would most likely be in their homes and the men at work in the open air or in factory yards, from which escape was easy. ”

“ It is level and uninteresting as a piece of waste ground. Too poor to grow grass, there is nothing to indicate that it had ever been anything else than what it is. It is as clean of débris and wreckage as though there had never been a building on it. In reality it was the central and busiest part of Johnstown. Buildings, both dwellings and stores, covered it thickly. Its streets were paved, and its sidewalks of substantial stone. It had street-car lines, gas and electric lights, and all the other improvements of a substantial city of 15,000 or 20,000 inhabitants. ”

“ At Johnstown a similar scene was enacted, only on a much larger scale. The population is greater and the sweeping whirlpool rushed into a denser mass of humanity. The imagination of the reader can better depict the spectacle than the pen of the writer can give it. It was a twilight of terror, and the gathering shades of evening closed in on a panorama of horrors that has few parallels in the history of casualties.
When the great wave from Conemaugh lake, behind the dam, came down the Conemaugh Valley, the first obstacle it struck was the great viaduct over the South Fork. ”

“ A disaster of unparalleled magnitude has overtaken the people of that valley and elsewhere. Without warning, their homes have been swept away by an unexpected and unprecedented flood. The daily journals of this city contain long lists of the dead, and the number of those who perished is still unknown. The survivors are destitute. They are houseless and homeless, with scant food and no shelter, and the destructive waters have not yet subsided. ”

“ During all this solemn Sunday Johnstown has been drenched with the tears of stricken mortals, and the air is filled with sobs and sighs that come from breaking hearts. There are scenes enacted here every hour and every minute that affect all beholders profoundly. When homes are thus torn asunder in an instant, and the loved ones hurled from the arms of loving and devoted mothers, there is an element of sadness in the tragedy that overwhelms every heart. ”

“ It was impossible to aid them further, however, so they cut the engine loose from the train, and the engineer, with one wild wrench, threw the lever wide open, and they were away on a mad race for life. For a moment it seemed that they would not receive momentum enough to keep ahead of the flood, and they cast one despairing glance back. Then they could see the awful deluge approaching in its might. On it came, rolling and roaring like some Titanic monster, tossing and tearing houses, sheds, and trees in its awful speed as if they were mere toys. ”

“ He was the first to discover the impending break in the South Fork dam, and jumping into the saddle he started at breakneck speed down the valley shouting: “The dam; the dam is breaking; run for your lives!” Hundreds of people were saved by this timely warning. Reaching South Fork Station, young Parke telegraphed tidings of the coming inundation to Johnstown, ten miles below, fully an hour before the flood came in “a solid wall of water thirty feet high” to drown the mountain-bound town. ”

“ THE DÉBRIS ABOVE THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD BRIDGE.
One of the first to reach Johnstown from a distance was a New York World correspondent, who on Sunday wrote as follows:—
“I walked late yesterday afternoon from New Florence to a place opposite Johnstown, a distance of four miles. I describe what I actually saw. All along the way bodies were seen lying on the river banks. In one place a woman was half buried in the mud, only a limb showing. In another was a mother with her babe clasped to her breast. Further along lay a husband and wife, their arms wound around each other’s necks. ”

“ Hundreds of people from ill-fated Johnstown are wandering homeless and starving on the mountain-side. Very few saved anything, and I saw numbers going down the stream naked. The suffering within the next few days will be fearful unless prompt relief is extended.”
H. M. Bennett and S. W. Keltz, engineer and conductor of engine No. 1,165, an extra freight, which happened to be lying at South Fork when the dam broke, tell a graphic story of their wonderful flight and escape on the locomotive before the advancing flood. ”

“ There was a strained look on men’s faces when he told them in a low voice that he held the copy of a report which he had drawn up on the dam, calling attention to the fact that it was extremely dangerous to the people living in the valley.
One of the peculiar things a stranger notices in Johnstown is the comparatively small number of women seen in the place. Of the throngs who walk about the streets searching for dead friends, there is not one woman to ten men. Occasionally a little group of two or three women with sad faces will pick their way about, looking for the morgues. ”

“ Rich and poor were served alike by this terrible disaster. I saw a girl standing in her bare feet on the river’s bank, clad in a loose petticoat and with a shawl over her head. At first I thought she was an Italian woman, but her face showed that I was mistaken. She was the belle of the town—the daughter of a wealthy Johnstown banker—and this single petticoat and shawl were not only all that was left her, but all that was saved from the magnificent residence of her father. ”

“ Over one thousand bodies have been found since sunrise to-day, and the most skeptical concede that the remains of thousands more rest beneath the [Pg 122] débris above the Johnstown bridge. The population of Johnstown, the surrounding towns and the portion of the valley affected by the flood is, or was, from 50,000 to 55,000. Numerous leading citizens of Johnstown, who survived the flood, have been interviewed, and the concensus of opinion was that fully thirty per cent of the residents of Johnstown and Cambria had been victims of the continued disasters of fire and water. ”

“ All day Saturday he worked like a beaver in water to his neck, and he saved the lives of many.
No man returns from the valley of death with more horrible remembrance of the flood than Dr. Henry H. Phillips, of Pittsburg. He is the only one known to be saved out of a household of thirteen, among whom was his feeble old mother and other near and dear friends. His own life was saved by his happening to step out upon the portico of the house just as the deluge came. Dr. Phillips had gone to Johnstown to bring his mother, who was an invalid, to his home in the East End. ”

“ The people were as unprepared as were the victims of the Johnstown disaster. Good authorities place the number of human beings that perished in this flood at about four hundred thousand, and the destruction of property was in proportion. ”

“ I suppose the news that some relatives had perished was what turned her mind. I am much afraid that Mrs. Slick is not the only one in Johnstown whose reason has been dethroned by the calamity. I have talked with many citizens, and they certainly seem crazy to me. When the excitement passes off I suppose they will regain their reason. The escape of my uncle, George R. Slick, and his wife, I think was really providential. They, too, had determined to heed the warning that the dam was unsafe. When the flood came they had a carriage waiting at the front door. ”

“ It was that New York men, starting behind us, had got into Johnstown through Pittsburg by way of the New York Central and its connections. No telegrams were penned with more conflicting emotions surging through the writer than those by which the Times’s correspondent made it known that he had got out of the Martinsburg pocket and was about to make a wagon journey of one hundred and ten miles across the mountains, and asked for information as to whether any Eastern man had got to the scene of the flood. ”

“ The storm that filled Conemaugh Lake and burst its bounds also wrought sad havoc elsewhere. Williamsport, Pa., underwent the experience of being flooded with thirty-four feet of water, of having the Susquehanna boom taken out with two hundred million feet of logs, over forty million feet of sawed lumber taken, mills carried away and others wrecked, business and industrial establishments wrecked, and a large number of lives lost. The flood was nearly seven feet higher than the great high water of 1865. ”