The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 41

Crowding in the Supplies.

The Baltimore and Ohio is piling the supplies in to-day faster than the men can unload them. In the neighborhood of 100 carloads were received.

The Pennsylvania during to-day has handled something like twenty-eight carloads all told. In the way of food the articles most needed are fresh, salt meats, sugar, rice, coffee, tea, and dried and canned fruits. The supply of sugar gave out entirely to-day. Twenty thousand pounds of Cincinnati hams arrived to-day and they melted like 20,000 pounds of ice beneath the scorching heat of this afternoon's sun. Much of the clothing that is received here is new and serviceable, but thousands of pieces are so badly worn that, to use the words of General Axline, of Ohio, who is doing n.o.ble service here with the thousands of other self-sacrificing men, "it is unfit to be worn by tramps." Many old shoes with the soles half torn off have been received. Shoes are badly needed at once or all Johnstown will be barefooted.

Eighteen Carloads of Relief.

Even in the rush of distribution the officials who have it in charge can find time to say a hearty word of praise for those towns which have contributed to the sufferers. Philadelphia's first installment was the first to arrive from the East, and more goods have been coming in steadily ever since. W.H. Tumblestone, the president of the Retail Grocers' a.s.sociation of Pennsylvania, who was appointed first lieutenant of the Philadelphia relief by the Mayor, arrived here first. He set at work handling coffins, but as soon as the first freight car of goods arrived he was put in charge of their distribution and has been working like threemen ever since. The eight freight cars from Philadelphia which arrived with the relief party on Monday, at 4 o'clock, were distributed from a great storehouse at the terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The goods are carried in bulk from the cars to the warehouse by a gang of twenty-eight men, who are identified by red flannel hat-bands. When they fail to enthuse over their work Mr. Tumblestone gets off his coat and shoves boxes himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DISTRIBUTING CLOTHING AND OTHER SUPPLIES.]

Distributing Supplies.

Inside the warehouse a score of volunteers and Pittsburgh policemen break open the boxes and pile the goods in separate heaps; the women's clothing, the men's, the children's and the different sizes being placed in regular order. Then the barriers are opened and the crowd surges in like depositors making a run on a savings bank. The police keep good order and the ubiquitous Tumblestone and his a.s.sistants dole out the goods to all who have orders. Special orders call for stoves, mattra.s.ses and blankets.

If the Philadelphians could see the faces of the people they are helping before and after they have pa.s.sed the distribution windows they would feel well repaid for their visible sympathy. Chairman Scott says the cla.s.s of goods from Philadelphia have been of the highest quality. "We have been delighted with the thought and excellence of the selections and amiable nature of the contributions. The two miles of track lying between here and Morrellville are still blocked with cars stretched from one end to the other, and fresh arrivals are coming in daily over the Baltimore and Ohio." Although it is impossible to say how much has been received from Philadelphia, Mr. Tumblestone says that so far as many as eighteen freight cars, each filled from the sides to the roof, have arrived from the Quaker City, and their contents have been distributed.

How Rival Hotels were Crushed Together.

The princ.i.p.al hotels of the town were bunched in a group about the corner of Main and Clinton streets. They were the Merchants', a large old-fashioned, three-story tavern, with a stable yard behind, a relic of staging days; the Hurlburt House, the leading hotel of the place, a fine four-story brick structure with a mansard roof and all the latest wrinkles in furnishing inside and out; the Fritz House, a narrow, four-story structure, with an ornate front, and the Keystone, a smaller hotel than any of the others.

These few inns stood in the path of the flood. The Hurlburt, the largest and handsomest, was absolutely obliterated. The Keystone's ruin was next in completion. It stood across Clinton Street from Fritz's, and Landlord Charles West has not yet recovered from the surprise of seeing the rival establishment thrown bodily across the street against his second story front, tearing it completely out.

After the water subsided it fell back upon the pavement in front of its still towering rival, and in the meantime Landlord West had saved mine host of the Keystone and his family from the roof which was thrust in his windows.

Back of Fritz's there was a little alley, which made a course for a part of the torrent. Fully half a dozen houses were sent swimming in here.

They crushed their way through the small hotel's outhouses straight to the rear of the Merchants', and sliced the walls off the old inn as a hungry survivor to-day cut a Philadelphia cheese. You can see the interior of the rooms. The beds were swept out into the flood, but a lonesome wardrobe fell face downward on the floor and somehow escaped.

There are bodies under the rear wall. How many is not known, but Landlord West, of Fritz's, says he is certain there were people on the rear porch of the Merchants'. The story of Landlord West's rival being thrown into his front windows has its parallels.

Colonel Higgins, the manager of the Cambria Club House, was in the third story of the building with his family. Suddenly a man was hurled by the torrent rapidly through the window. He was rescued, then fainted, and upon inspection was found to have a broken leg. The leg was bandaged and the man resuscitated, and when this last act of kindness was accomplished he said faintly: "This ain't so bad. I've been in a blow-up."

A Cool Request.

This remark showed the greatest sang-froid known to be exhibited during the flood, but the most irreverent was that of an old man who was saved by E.B. Entworth, of the Johnson works. On Sat.u.r.day morning Mr. Entworth rowed to a house near the flowing debris at the bridge, and found a woman, with a broken arm, and a baby. After she had got into the boat she cried: "Come along, grandpap." Whereupon an old man, chilled but chipper, jumped up from the other side of the roof, slid down into the boat, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed: "Gentlemen, can any of you give me a chew of tobacco?"

Scenes Amid the Ruins.

One of the curious finds in the debris yesterday was two proofs from cabinet-size negatives of two persons--a man and a woman. The prints were found within two feet of each other in the ruins near the Merchants' Hotel. They were immediately recognized as portraits of Mamie Patton, formerly a Johnstown girl, and Charles DeKnight, once a Pullman palace car conductor. The two were found dying together in a room in a Pittsburgh hotel several months ago, the woman having shot the man and then herself. She claimed that he was her husband. The dress in which the picture showed her was the same that she wore when she killed DeKnight.

Tracks that were Laid in a Hurry.

If Pennsylvania Railroad trains ever ran over tougher-looking tracks than those used now through Johnstown it must have been before people began to ride on it. The section from the north end of the bridge to the railroad station has a grade that wabbles between 50 and 500 feet to the mile and jerks back and forth sideways as though laid by a gang of intoxicated men on a dark night. When the first engine went over it everybody held his breath and watched to see it tumble. These eccentricities are being straightened out, however, as fast as men and broken stones can do it.

The railroad bridge at Johnstown deserves attention beyond that which it is receiving on account of the way it held back the flood. It is one of the most ma.s.sive pieces of masonry ever set up in this country. In a general way it is solid masonry of cut sandstone blocks of unusual size, the whole nearly 400 feet long, forty wide, and averaging about forty deep. Seven arches of about fifty feet span are pierced through it, rising to within a few feet of the top and leaving ma.s.sive piers down to the rock beneath. As the bridge crosses the stream diagonally, the arches pierce the ma.s.s in a slanting direction, and this greatly adds to the heavy appearance of the bridge. There has been some disposition to find fault with the bridge for being so strong, the idea being that if it had gone out there would have been no heaping up of buildings behind it, no fire, and fewer deaths. This is probably unfair, as there were hundreds of persons saved when their houses were stopped against the bridge by climbing out or being helped out upon the structure. If the bridge had gone, too, the flood would have taken the whole instead of only half of Cambria City.

Photographers Forced to Work.

The camera fiend has about ceased his wanderings. An order was issued yesterday from headquarters to arrest and put to work the swarms of amateur photographers who are to be found everywhere about the ruins.

Those who will not work are to be taken uptown under guard. This order is issued to keep down the number of useless people and thus save the fast diminishing provisions for the workers.

A man who stood on the bluff and saw the first wave of the flood come down the valley tried to describe it. "I looked up," he said, "and saw something that looked like a wall of houses and trees up the valley. The next moment Johnstown seemed coming toward me. It was lifted right up and in a minute was smashing against the bridge and the houses were flying in splinters across the top and into the water beyond."

A 13-year-old girl, pretty and with golden hair, wanders about from morgue to morgue looking for ten of a family of eleven, she being the sole survivor.

There were half a dozen bulldogs in one house that was heaped up in the wreck some distance above the bridge. They were loose among the debris, and it is said by those who claim to have seen it that after fighting among themselves they turned upon the people near them and were tearing and biting them until the flames swept over the place.

Slow Time to Pittsburgh.

Irregular is a weak word for the manner in which pa.s.senger trains run between this place and Pittsburgh. The distance is seventy miles and the ordinary time is two hours. The train that left here at 4.30 yesterday afternoon reached there at midnight. This is ordinarily good time nowadays. A pa.s.sage in five hours is an exceptional one.

Engine 1309, the one that faced the flood below Conemaugh and stood practically unharmed, backed down to the station as soon as the tracks were laid up to where it stood and worked all right. Only the oil cups and other small fittings, with the headlight, were broken.

The superintendent of the Woodvale Woolen Mills, one of the Cambria Iron Company's concerns, was one of the very few fortunate ones in that little place. He and all his family got into the flouring mill just below the woolen mill and upon the roof. The woolen mill was totally wrecked, though not carried away, and the flouring mill was badly damaged, but the roof held and all were saved. These two parts of the mill were the only buildings left standing in Woodvale.

A man in Kernville, on Friday last, had jet black hair, moustache and beard. That night he had a battle with the waters. On Sat.u.r.day morning his hair and beard began to turn gray, and they are now well streaked with white. He attributes the change to his awful Friday night's experience.

Wounds of the Dead.

It is the impression of the medical corps and military surgeons who arrived here early in the week that hundreds, maybe thousands of men, women and children were insensible to all horror on that awful afternoon, just a week ago, before the waters of the valley closed in over them. Their opinion is based on the fact that hundreds and hundreds of the bodies already brought to light are terribly wounded somewhere, generally on the head. In many instances the wounds are sufficient in themselves to have caused death.

The crashing of houses together in the first mad rush of the flood with a force greater than the collision of railroad trains making fast time, and the hurling of timbers, poles, towers and boulders through the air is believed to have caused a legion of deaths in an instant, before the lost knew what was coming. Even the survivors bear testimony to this.

Surgeon Foster, of the 14th Regiment, who was first to have charge of the hospital, tells how he treated long lines of men, women and children for wounds too terrible to mention and they themselves know not how it happened only that they fell in a moment. In connection with his experience he speaks of the tender, yet heroic, work of four Sisters of Mercy, two from Pittsburgh and two here, who went ahead of him down the ranks of the wounded with sponges, chloroforming the suffering, before his scalpel aid reached them. Sometimes there were a dozen victims ahead of his knives.

Once these sisters stopped, for the first time showing horror, by a great pile of dead children and infants on the river bank laid one on top of the other. By one man each little body was seized and the clothing quickly cut from it. Then he pa.s.sed it to another, who washed it in the river. Then a third man took it in the line of the dead. But the Sisters of Mercy saw they were too late there, and pa.s.sed on among the living.

Most of the Pennsylvania Railroad pa.s.sengers who left Pittsburgh for the East last Friday and were caught in the flood in the Conemaugh Valley reached Philadelphia in a long special train at 5 o'clock Friday morning, June 7th, after a week of adventure, peril and narrow escapes which none of them will ever forget. A few of their number who lost presence of mind when the flood struck the train were drowned. The survivors are unanimous in their appreciation of the kindness shown them by Pennsylvania officials, and in their praise of the hospitality and generosity of the country folk, among whom they found homes for three days. The escapes in some instances seem miraculous.

An hour before the flood the first section of the day express stopped at Conemaugh City, about ten miles below the dam at South Fork, on account of a washout farther up the valley. The second section of the express and another pa.s.senger train soon overtook the first and half an hour before the dam broke all these trains stood abreast on the four-track road. The positions now occupied seems providential. If the railroad men had foreseen the disaster they could not have shown greater prudence, for the engine of the first section of the express, on the track nearest the mountain side, stood about a car's length ahead of the second. The engine of the third train came to a stop a car's length behind the second and on the outer track, which was within a few feet of the swollen Conemaugh River, stood a heavily laden freight train.

When the flood came it struck the slanting front of the four locomotives. Most of the pa.s.sengers had, in the meantime, escaped up the mountain side. Three of the locomotives were carried down by the irresistible torrent, but the fourth turned on its side and was soon buried under sand, tree trunks and other debris. This served as a breakwater for the flood and accounts for the fact that the trains of cars were not reduced to kindling wood while the railroad roundhouse and its twelve locomotives, a little farther down the valley, was taken up bodily, broken into fragments and its mighty inmates carried like chips for miles down the valley.

Weary Pa.s.sengers.

From end to end of the train, upon its arrival at Philadelphia, there was an aspect of absolute exhaustion, varied in its expression according to the individual. Phlegmatic men lay upon their backs, across the seats, with their legs dangling in the aisles. One might send them spinning round or toss their feet out of the pa.s.sage, and their worn faces showed no more sign than if they were lifeless. Women lay swathed in veils and wraps, sometimes alone, sometimes huddled together, and sometimes guarded by the arms of their husbands--husbands who themselves had given way and slept as heavily as if dosed with narcotics.

But here and there is the typical American girl, full of nerve. She is worn out, too, but sleeps only fitfully, starting up at every sound and dropping uneasily off again. Now and then one encountered the man and woman of restless temperament, whose sleepless eyes looked out thinking, thinking--thinking on the trees and gra.s.s and bushes, faintly showing form now in the gray light of the very earliest dawn.