History of the Johnstown Flood Part 2

The left and centre came tearing down Stony creek. There was a collision of forces. The men, women, children, horses, other domestic animals, houses, bridges, railroad cars, logs and tree branches were jammed together in a solid ma.s.s, which only dynamite can break up. The outlet of Stony creek was almost completely closed and the channel of the Conemaugh was also choked. The water in both surged back. In Stony creek it went along the curve of the base of the hill in front of which Kernville is built. Dividing its strength, one part of the flood went up Stony creek a short distance and moved around again into Johnstown. It swept before it many more houses than before and carried them around in a circle, until they met and crashed against other houses, torn from the point of Johnstown flat by a similar wave moving in a circle from the Conemaugh.

The two waves and their burdens went around and around in slowly-diminishing circles, until most of the houses had been ground to pieces. There are living men, women and children who circled in these frightful vortices for an hour. Lawyer Rose, his wife, his two brothers and his two sisters are among those. They were drawn out of their house by the suction of the retreating water, and thus were started on a frightful journey. Three times they went from the Kernville side of the creek to the centre of the Johnstown flat and past their own dwelling.

They were dropped at last on the Kernville sh.o.r.e. Mr. Rose had his collar bone broken, but the others were hurt only by fright, wetting and some bruises.

Some of the back water went up the creek and did damage at Grubtown and Hornerstown. More of it, following the line of the mountain, rushed in at the back of Kernville. It cut a clear path for itself from the lower end of the village to the upper end, diagonally opposite, pa.s.sing through the centre. It sent little streams to topple homes over in side places and went on a round trip into the higher part of Johnstown, between the creek and the hill. It carried houses from Kernville to the Johnstown bank of the creek, and left them there. Then it coursed down the bank, overturning trains of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and also houses, and keeping on until it had made the journey several times.

How so marvelous a force was exerted is ill.u.s.trated in the following statement from Jacob Reese, of Pittsburg, the inventor of the basic process for manufacturing steel. Mr. Reese says:--

"When the South Fork dam gave way, 16,000,000 tons of water rushed down the mountain side, carrying thousands of tons of rocks, logs and trees with it. When the flood reached the Conemaugh Valley it struck the Pennsylvania Railroad at a point where they make up the trains for ascending the Allegheny Mountains. Several trains with their locomotives and loaded cars were swept down the valley before the flood wave, which is said to have been fifty feet high. Cars loaded with iron, cattle, and freight of all kinds, with those mighty locomotives, weighing from seventy to one hundred tons each, were pushed ahead of the flood, trucks and engines rolling over and over like mere toys.

"Sixteen million tons of water gathering fences, barns, houses, mills and shops into its maw. Down the valley for three miles or more rushed this mighty avalanche of death, sweeping everything before it, and leaving nothing but death and destruction behind it. When it struck the railroad bridge at Johnstown, and not being able to force its way through that stone structure, the debris was gorged and the water dammed up fifty feet in ten minutes.

"This avalanche was composed of more than 100,000 tons of rocks, locomotives, freight cars, car trucks, iron, logs, trees and other material pushed forward by 16,000,000 tons of water falling 500 feet, and it was this that, sliding over the ground, mowed down the houses, mills and factories as a mowing machine does a field of grain. It swept down with a roaring, crushing sound, at the rate of a mile a minute, and hurled 10,000 people into the jaws of death in less than half an hour.

And so the people called it the avalanche of death."

CHAPTER V.

"Johnstown is annihilated," telegraphed Superintendent Pitcairn to Pittsburg on Friday night. "He came," says one who visited the place on Sunday, "very close to the facts of the case. Nothing like it was ever seen in this country. Where long rows of dwelling-houses and business blocks stood forty-eight hours ago, ruin and desolation now reign supreme. Probably 1500 houses have been swept from the face of the earth as completely as if they had never been erected. Main street, from end to end, is piled fifteen and twenty feet high with debris, and in some instances it is as high as the roofs of the houses. This great ma.s.s of wreckage fills the street from curb to curb, and frequently has crushed the buildings in and filled the s.p.a.ce with reminders of the terrible calamity. There is not a man in the place who can give any reliable estimate of the number of houses that have been swept away. City Solicitor Kuehn, who should be very good authority in this matter, places the number at 1500. From the woolen mill above the island to the bridge, a distance of probably two miles, a strip of territory nearly a half mile in width has been swept clean, not a stick of timber or one brick on top of another being left to tell the story. It is the most complete wreck that imagination could portray.

"All day long men, women, and children were plodding about the desolate waste looking in vain to locate the boundaries of their former homes.

Nothing but a wide expanse of mud, ornamented here and there with heaps of driftwood, remained, however, for their contemplation. It is perfectly safe to say that every house in the city that was not located well up on the hillside was either swept completely away or wrecked so badly that rebuilding will be absolutely necessary. These losses, however, are nothing compared to the frightful sacrifice of precious human lives to be seen on every hand.

"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.

"A slide, a series of frightful tosses from side to side, a run, and you have crossed the narrow rope bridge which spanned the chasm dug by the waters between the stone bridge and Johnstown. Crossing the bridge is an exciting task, yet many women accomplished it rather than remain in Johnstown. The bridge pitched like a ship in a storm. Within two inches of your feet rushed the muddy waters of the Conemaugh. There were no ropes to easily guide, and creeping was more convenient than walking.

One had to cross the Conemaugh at a second point in order to reach Johnstown proper. This was accomplished by a skiff ferry. The ferryman clung to a rope and pulled the boat over.

"After landing one walks across a desolate sea of mud, in which there are interred many human bodies. It was once the handsome portion of the town. The cellars are filled up with mud, so that a person who has never seen the city can hardly imagine that houses ever stood where they did.

Four streets solidly built up with houses have been swept away. Nothing but a small, two-story frame house remains. It was near the edge of the wave and thus escaped, although one side was torn off. The walk up to wrecks of houses was interrupted in many places by small branch streams.

Occasionally across the flats could be seen the remains of a victim.

The stench arising from the mud is sickening. Along the route were strewn tin utensils, pieces of machinery, iron pipes, and wares of every conceivable kind. In the midst of the wreck a clothing store dummy, with a hand in the position of beckoning to a person, stands erect and uninjured.

"It is impossible to describe the appearance of Main street. Whole houses have been swept down this one street and become lodged. The wreck is piled as high as the second-story windows. The reporter could step from the wreck into the auditorium of the opera house. The ruins consist of parts of houses, trees, saw logs and reels from the wire factory.

Many houses have their side walls and roofs torn up, and one can walk directly into what had been second-story bed-rooms, or go in by way of the top. Further up town a raft of logs lodged in the street, and did great damage. At the beginning of the wreckage, which is at the opening of the valley of the Conemaugh, one can look up the valley for miles and not see a house. Nothing stands but an old woolen mill.

"Charles Luther is the name of the boy who stood on an adjacent elevation and saw the whole flood. He said he heard a grinding noise far up the valley, and looking up he could see a dark line moving slowly toward him. He saw that it was houses. On they came, like the hand of a giant clearing off his table. High in the air would be tossed a log or beam, which fell back with a crash. Down the valley it moved and across the little mountain city. For ten minutes nothing but moving houses were seen, and then the waters came with a roar and a rush. This lasted for two hours, and then it began to flow more steadily."

Seen from the high hill across the river from Johnstown, the Conemaugh Valley gives an easy explanation of the terrible destruction which it has suffered. This valley, stretching back almost in a straight line for miles, suddenly narrows near Johnstown. The wall of water which came tearing down toward the town, picking up all the houses and mills in the villages along its way, suddenly rose in height as it came to the narrow pa.s.s. It swept over the nearest part of the town and met the waters of Stony creek, swollen by rains, rushing along with the speed of a torrent. The two forces coming together, each turned aside and started away again in a half-circle, seeking an outlet in the lower Conemaugh Valley. The ma.s.sive stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, at the lower base of the triangle, was almost instantly choked up with the great ma.s.s of wreckage dashed against it, and became a dam that could not be swept away, and proved to be the ruin of the town and the villages above. The waters checked here, formed a vast whirlpool, which destroyed everything within its circle. It backed up on the other side of the triangle, and devastated the village of Kernville, across the river from Johnstown.

The force of the current was truly appalling. The best evidence of its force is exhibited in the ma.s.s of debris south of the Pennsylvania bridge. Persons on the hillsides declare that houses, solid from their foundation stones, were rushed on to destruction at the rate of thirty miles an hour. On one house forty persons were counted; their cries for help were heard far above the roaring waters. At the railroad bridge the house parted in the middle, and the cries of the unfortunate people were smothered in the engulfing waters.

At the Cambria Iron Works a huge hickory struck the south brick wall of the rolling mill at an angle, went through it and the west wall, where it remains. A still more extraordinary incident is seen at the foot-bridge of the Pennsylvania station, on the freight track built for the Cambria Iron Works. The sunken track and bridge are built in a curve. In clearing out the track the Cambria workmen discovered two huge bridge trusses intact, the larger one 30 feet long and 10 feet high. It lay close to the top of the bridge and had been driven into the cut at least fifty feet.

It was with an impulse to the right side of the mountain that the great ma.s.s of water came down the Conemaugh river. It was a ma.s.s of water with a front forty feet high, and an eighth of a mile wide. Its velocity was so great that its first sweep did little damage on either side. It had no time to spread. Where it burst from the gap it swept south until it struck the bridge, and, although it was ten feet or more deep over the top of the bridge, the obstruction of the ma.s.s of masonry was so great that the head of the rush of water was turned back along the Pennsylvania Railroad bluff on the left, and, sweeping up to where it met the first stream again, licked up the portion of the town on the left side of the triangular plain. A great eddy was thus formed. Through the Stony Creek Gap to the right there was a rush of surplus water. In two minutes after the current first burst through, forty feet deep, with a solid ma.s.s of water whirling around with a current of tremendous velocity, it was a whirlpool vastly greater than that of ten Niagaras.

The only outlet was under and over the railroad bridge, and the continuing rush of the waters into the valley from the gap was greater for some time than the means of escape at the bridge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS SHOWING THE PATH OF THE FLOOD.]

"Standing now at the bridge," says a visitor on Monday, "where this vast whirlpool struggled for exit, the air is heavy with smoke and foul with nameless odors from a ma.s.s of wreckage. The area of the triangular s.p.a.ce where the awful whirlpool revolved is said to be about four square miles. The area of the s.p.a.ce covered by this smoking ma.s.s is sixty acres. The surface of this ma.s.s is now fifteen feet below the top of the bridge and about thirty below the point on the bluff where the surface of the whirlpool lashed the banks. One ragged ma.s.s some distance above the bridge rises several feet above the general level, but with that exception the surface of the debris is level. It has burned off until it reached the water, and is smouldering on as the water gradually lowers.

On the right bank, at about where was the highest water level, a detachment of the Pittsburg Fire Department is throwing two fitful streams of water down into the smoke, with the idea of gradually extinguishing the fire. In the immensity of the disaster with which they combat their feeble efforts seem like those of boys with squirt guns dampening a bonfire. About the sixty acres of burning debris, and to the left of it from where it begins to narrow toward Stony Creek Gap, there is a large area of level mud, with muddy streams wandering about in it.

This tract of mud comprises all of the triangle except a thin fringe of buildings along the bluff on the Pennsylvania Railroad. A considerable number of houses stand on the high ground on the lower face of the central mountain and off to the right into Stony Creek Gap. The fringe along the Pennsylvania Railroad is mostly of stores and other large brick buildings that are completely wrecked, though not swept away. The houses on the higher ground are unharmed; but down toward the edge they fade away by degrees of completeness in their wreckage into the yellow level of the huge tract over which the mighty whirlpool swept. Off out of sight, in Stony Creek Gap, are fringes of houses on either side of the muddy flat.

"This flat is a peculiar thing. It is level and uninteresting as a piece of waste ground. Too poor to grow gra.s.s, there is nothing to indicate that it had ever been anything else than what it is. It is as clean of debris 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. Iron bridges spanned the streams, and the buildings were of substantial character. Not a brick remains, not a stone nor a stick of timber in all this territory. There are not even hummocks and mounds to show where wreckage might be covered with a layer of mud. They are not there, they are gone--every building, every street, every sidewalk and pavement, the street railways, and everything else that covered the surface of the earth has vanished as utterly as though it had never been there. The ground was swept as clean as though some mighty sc.r.a.per had been dragged over it again and again. Not even the lines of the streets can be remotely traced.

"'I have visited Johnstown a dozen times a year for a long time,' said a business man to-day, 'and I know it thoroughly, but I haven't the least idea now of what part of it this is. I can't even tell the direction the streets used to run.'

"His bewilderment is hardly greater than that of the citizens themselves. They wander about in the mud for hours trying to find the spot where the house of some friend or relative used to stand. 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 debris is inspected. It seems from a little distance like any other ma.s.s of wreckage, though vastly longer than any ever before seen in this country. It must have been many times more tremendous when it was heaped up twenty feet higher over its whole area and before the fire leveled it off. But neither then nor now can the full terror of the flood that piled it there be adequately realized until a trip across parts where the fire has been extinguished shows the manner in which the stuff composing it is packed together. It is not a heap of broken timbers lying loosely thrown together in all directions. It is a solid ma.s.s. The boards and timbers which made up the frame buildings are laid together as closely as sticks of wood in a pile--more closely, for they are welded into one another until each stick is as solidly fixed in place as though all were one. A curious thing is that wherever there are a few boards together they are edge up, and never standing on end or flat. The terrible force of the whirlpool that ground four square miles of buildings into this sixty acres of wreckage left no opportunity for gaps or holes between pieces in the river. Everything was packed together as solidly as though by sledge-hammer blows.

"But the boards and timber of four square miles of buildings are not all that is in that sixty-acre ma.s.s. An immense amount of debris from further up the valley lies there. Twenty-seven locomotives, several Pullman cars and probably a hundred other cars, or all that is left of them, are in that ma.s.s. Fragments of iron bridges can be seen sticking out occasionally above the wreckage. They are about the only things the fire has not leveled, except the curious hillock spoken of, which is an eighth of a mile back from the bridge, where the flames apparently raged less fiercely. Scattered over the area, also, are many blackened logs that were too big to be entirely burned, and that stick up now like spar buoys in a sea of ruin. Little jets of flame, almost unseen by daylight, but appearing as evening falls, are scattered thickly over the surface of the wreckage.

"Of the rest of Johnstown, and the collection of towns within sight of the bridge, not much is to be said. They are, to a greater or less extent, gone, as Johnstown is gone. Far up the gap through which came the flood a large brick building remains standing, but ruined. It is all that is left of one of the biggest wire mills and steel works in the country. Turning around below the bridge are the works of the Cambria Iron Company. The buildings are still standing, but they are pretty well ruined, and the machinery with which they were filled is either totally destroyed or damaged almost beyond repair. High up on the hill at the left and scattered up on other hills in sight are many dwellings, neat, well kept, and attractive places apparently, and looking as bright and fresh now as before the awful torrent wiped out of existence everything in the valley below.

"This is Johnstown and its immediate vicinity as nearly as words can paint it. It is a single feature, one section out of fifteen miles of horror that stretches through this once lovely valley of the Allegheny.

What is true of Johnstown is true of every town for miles up and down.

The desolation of one town may differ from the desolation in others as one death may differ from another; but it is desolation and death everywhere--desolation so complete, so relentless, so dreadful that it is absolutely beyond the power of language fairly to tell the tale."

CHAPTER VI.

Mr. William Henry Smith, General Manager of the a.s.sociated Press, was a pa.s.senger on a railroad train which reached the Conemaugh Valley on the very day of the disaster. He writes as follows of what he saw:

"The fast line trains that leave Chicago at quarter past three and Cincinnati at seven P.M. const.i.tute the day-express eastward from Pittsburg, which runs in two sections. This train left Pittsburg on time Friday morning, but was stopped for an hour at Johnstown by reports of a wash-out ahead. It had been raining hard for over sixteen hours, and the sides of the mountains were covered with water descending into the valleys. The Conemaugh River, whose bank is followed by the Pennsylvania Railroad for many miles, looked an angry flood nearly bankfull.

Pa.s.sengers were interested in seeing hundreds of saw-logs and an enormous amount of driftwood shoot rapidly by, and the train pursued its way eastward. At Johnstown there was a long wait, as before stated. The lower stories of many houses were submerged by the slack-water, and the inhabitants were looking out of the second-story windows. Horses were standing up to their knees in water in the streets; a side-track of the railroad had been washed out; loaded cars were on the bridge to keep it steady, and the huge poles of the Western Union Telegraph Company, carrying fifteen wires, swayed badly, and several soon went down. The two sections ran to Conemaugh, about two miles eastward of Johnstown, and lay there about three hours, when they were moved on to the highest ground and placed side by side. The mail train was placed in the rear of the first section, and a freight train was run onto a side track on the bank of the Conemaugh. The report was that a bridge had been washed out, carrying away one track and that the other track was unsafe. There was a rumor also that the reservoir at South Fork might break. This made most of the pa.s.sengers uneasy, and they kept a pretty good look-out for information. The porters of the Pullman cars remained at their posts, and comforted the pa.s.sengers with the a.s.surance that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company always took care of its patrons. A few gentlemen and some ladies and children quietly seated themselves, apparently contented. One gentleman, who was ill, had his berth made up and retired, although advised not to do so.

"Soon the cry came that the water in the reservoir had broken down the barrier and was sweeping down the valley. Instantly there was a panic and a rush for the mountain side. Children were carried and women a.s.sisted by a few who kept cool heads. It was a race for life. There was seen the black head of the flood, now the monster Destruction, whose crest was high raised in the air, and with this in view even the weak found wings for their feet. No words can adequately describe the terror that filled every breast, or the awful power manifested by the flood.

The round-house had stalls for twenty-three locomotives. There were eighteen or twenty of these standing there at this time. There was an ominous crash, and the round-house and locomotives disappeared.

Everything in the main track of the flood was first lifted in air and then swallowed up by the waters. A hundred houses were swept away in a few minutes. These included the hotel, stores, and saloons on the front street and residences adjacent. The locomotive of one of the trains was struck by a house and demolished. The side of another house stopped in front of another locomotive and served as a shield. The rear car of the mail train swung around in the rear of the second section of the express and turned over on its side. Three men were observed standing upon it as it floated. The coupling broke, and the car moved out upon the bosom of the waters. As it would roll the men would shift their position. The situation was desperate, and they were given up for lost.

Two or three hardy men seized ropes and ran along the mountain side to give them aid. Later it was reported that the men escaped over some driftwood as their car was carried near a bank. It is believed there were several women and children inside the car. Of course they were drowned. As the fugitives on the mountain side witnessed the awful devastation they were moved as never before in their lives. They were powerless to help those seized upon by the waters; the despair of those who had lost everything in life and the wailing of those whose relatives or friends were missing filled their b.r.e.a.s.t.s with unutterable sorrow.

"The rain continued to fall steadily, but shelter was not thought of.

Few pa.s.sengers saved anything from the train, so sudden was the cry 'Run for your lives, the reservoir has broken!'

"Many were without hats, and as their baggage was left on the trains, they were without the means of relieving their unhappy condition. The occupants of the houses still standing on the high ground threw them open to those who had lost all, and to the pa.s.sengers of the train.

"During the height of the flood, the spectators were startled by the sound of two locomotive whistles from the very midst of the waters. Two engineers, with characteristic courage, had remained at their posts, and while there was destruction on every hand, and apparently no escape for them, they sounded their whistles. This they repeated at intervals, the last time with triumphant vigor, as the waters were receding from the sides of their locomotives. By half-past five the force of the reservoir water had been spent on the village of Conemaugh, and the Pullman cars and locomotive of the second section remained unmoved. This was because, being on the highest and hardest ground, the destructive current of the reservoir flood had pa.s.sed between that and the mountain, while the current of the river did not eat it away. But the other trains had been destroyed. A solitary locomotive was seen embedded in the mud where the round-house had stood.

"As the greatest danger had pa.s.sed, the people of Conemaugh gave their thoughts to their neighbors of the city of Johnstown. Here was centred the great steel and iron industries, the pride of Western Pennsylvania, the Cambria Iron Works being known everywhere. Here were churches, daily newspapers, banks, dry-goods houses, warehouses, and the comfortable and well-built homes of twelve thousand people. In the contemplation of the irresistible force of that awful flood, gathering additional momentum as it swept on toward the Gulf, it became clear that the city must be destroyed, and that unless the inhabitants had telegraphic notice of the breaking of the reservoir they must perish. A cry of horror went up from the hundreds on the mountain-side, and a few instinctively turned their steps toward Johnstown. The city was destroyed. All the mills, furnaces, manufactories, the many and varied industries, the banks, the residences, all, all were swallowed up before the shadows of night had settled down upon the earth. Those who came back by daybreak said that from five thousand to eight thousand had been drowned. Our hope is that this is an exaggeration, and when the roll is called most will respond. In the light of this calamity, the destruction at Conemaugh sinks into insignificance."

Mr. George Johnston, a lumber merchant of Pittsburg, was another witness. "I had gone to Johnstown," he says, "to place a couple of orders. I had scarcely reached the town, about three o'clock in the afternoon, when I saw a bulletin posted up in front of the telegraph office, around which quite a crowd of men had congregated. I pushed my way up, and read that the waters were so high in the Conemaugh that it was feared the three-mile dam, as it was called, would give way. I know enough about Johnstown to feel that my life was not worth a snap once that dam gave way. Although the Johnstown people did not seem to pay much attention to the warning, I was nervous and apprehensive. I had several parties to see, but concluded to let all but one go until some later day. So I hurried through with my most urgent transactions and started for the depot. The Conemaugh had then gotten so high that the residents of the low-lying districts had moved into upper stories. I noticed a number of wagons filled with furniture hurrying through the streets. A few families, either apprehensive of the impending calamity or driven from their houses by the rising waters, had started for the surrounding hills. Johnstown, you know, lies in a narrow valley, and lies princ.i.p.ally on the V-shaped point between the converging river and Stony Creek.