The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 43

The people had been warned enough about the dangers of their location.

They had been told again and again that the dam was unsafe, and whenever the freshets were out there were stories and rumors of its probable breaking. The freshets had been high for many days before that fatal Friday. All the creeks were over their banks and their waters were running on the streets. Cellars and pavements were flooded. Reports from the dam showed that it was holding back more water than at any other time in its history. A telegraph despatch early in the afternoon gave startling information about the cracks in the dam, but it was the old story of the wolf. They had heard it so often that they heard it this time and did not care.

The first warning that the people had of their coming doom was the roar of the advancing wave. It rushed out of the valley at four o'clock in the afternoon with incredible swiftness. Those who saw it and are still alive say that it seemed to be as high as an ordinary house. It carried in its front an immense amount of battered wreckage, and over it hung a cloud of what seemed to be fog, but was the dust from the buildings it had destroyed. Straight across the river it rushed upon the apex of the triangle. It struck the first houses and swept them away in fragments.

The cries and shrieks of the frightened people began to be heard above the roar of the floods, and a few steps further the great wave struck some unusually solid structure. Its force right in the centre was already diminished. On these houses it split and the greater part of it went on diagonally across the triangle, deflecting somewhat toward the north and so on down to the stone arch bridge.

Nothing Could Withstand the Flood.

Wherever it went the houses tumbled down as if they were built of cards.

It was not alone the great volume of water, but the immense revolving ma.s.s of lumber it carried, that gave it an additional and terrific force, and houses, five bridges, railroad trains, boilers and factories were whirling furiously about. What could stand against such an instrument of destruction as this? It swept the triangle as clean as a board. It tore up pavements. It dug out railroad tracks, and twisted them into strange and fantastic shapes. It carried with it thousands of human beings, crushing them against the fragments, and drove their bodies into the thick ma.s.s of mud and sand which it carried at the bottom. It went on and on straight as an arrow, and piled ma.s.ses of all it had gathered against and over the solid arches of the stone bridge.

The bridge sustained the shock. How it did it engineers who have seen the effects and the marvellous strength of the flood in other places wonder. An immense raft of houses and lumber and trees and rubbish of every kind, acres in extent, collected here.

Roasted in the Debris.

In these houses were imprisoned people still alive, in numbers estimated at two or three thousand, tossed about in the whirling flood which was turned into strange eddies by the obstruction it had met. In some way not explained a fire broke out.

The frame structures packed in closely together were like so much tinder wood. Those who had escaped drowning died in their prisons a more horrible death.

While this was going on that part of the divided stream which turned to the south continued on its way. At first its violence was undiminished, but as it went on the inclination of the land and the obstacles it met somewhat broke its force. It swept across the triangle, inclining toward the south, and was turned still further in that direction by the bed of Stony Creek, at the foot of the mountain which forms the western barrier of the basin in which Johnstown lies. Its course is plainly visible now, as it was two hours afterward. Where it started everything is cleared away.

A little further along the houses are still standing, but they are only ma.s.ses of lumber and laths. Still further to the north they are overturned or lying upon their sides or corners, some curiously battered and as full of great holes as if they had been shot at with cannon. They are surrounded by driftwood and timbers, ground into splinters, railroad cars, ties and beams, all in a wild, untraceable jumble.

The wave reached to the north at least a distance of a mile from the point where it was divided. Then it swept backward. It carried with it many houses that had come from every part of the river.

At the Mercy of the Waves.

Upon them and upon flooded roofs and doors and timbers were men, women and children crying, beseeching and praying for help. Those on the sh.o.r.e who were watching this never to be forgotten spectacle saw the sufferers in the river go sweeping by, saw them come down again and still were unable to give them the slightest a.s.sistance. The flood proceeded half a mile or more, and then was met and reinforced by a wave started backward from the eddy formed at the stone arch bridge. With redoubled force it turned once more to the south and then it went half a mile further, toppling over the houses, wrecking some and adding some to those which it had brought down from other places. For the second time it spent its force and turned back, swept to the south and to destruction those who had four times been within sight of safety. This time the whole ma.s.s of flooded wreckage was carried down to the stone arch bridge and added to the collection there and at last to the fire that was raging.

Hundreds Will Never Be Found.

The blackened timber left from this fire, wedged in tightly above the bridge, is the only gorge at which workmen have labored all this week with dynamite and monstrous cranes. In it and below it are unnumbered hundreds of bodies. How many perished in that frightful fire will never be known. Only a small proportion of the bodies can ever be found. Some were burned so that nothing but a handful of ashes remained, and that was swept away long ago with the torrent. Some were buried deep in the sand, and some have been carried down and hidden in sand banks and slews. Many will be destroyed by dynamite, and some will have disappeared long before the great flood of rubbish can be removed. Of all the horrible features of this dreadful story none is more heartrending than the story of that fire. It began about five o'clock that afternoon and went on all night and all the next day, and smouldered until Monday noon. Its progress was r.e.t.a.r.ded somewhat by the rain and by the soaking of the material in the water, but this was only an added horror, for it prolonged the anguish for those imprisoned in the great raft who plainly saw their approaching death.

Those who saw this sight from the sh.o.r.e cannot speak of it now and will hardly be able to speak of it as long as they live without tears.

Imagination could not picture a situation more harrowing to human feeling than to stand there and watch that horrible scene without being able to rescue the prisoners or even alleviate their sufferings.

Ruins Left to Tell the Tale.

Just below the stone bridge are the great works of the Cambria Iron Company. They occupy the eastern bank of the stream for a distance of half a mile. The flood, tearing over the bridge, descended upon these works and tore the southernmost end of them to pieces. The rest of the buildings escaped, but none of the works were swept away in the torrent.

An iron bridge used jointly by the public and by the iron company to transport its coal from the mines across the river was caught by the very front of the flood and tossed away as if built of toothpicks.

Looking from the stone arch bridge, the iron company's buildings, the lower town school house, three of the buildings which divided the flood, a church, part of a brick residence and a little cl.u.s.ter of brick business houses, is all that can be seen above the yellow waste. Why these buildings are left it is impossible to say. The school house, except for most of the windows being battered in and the scars and dents driven into it from the pa.s.sing wreckage, is almost uninjured, although it stands directly in the centre of the flood.

Locomotives Swimming in the Torrent.

It is plain from the appearance of the buildings that the direction of the flood in many places was rotary, and the houses which still stand may have escaped between the eddies. No other explanation seems possible, for the force of the torrent was tremendous. It carried five locomotives, with their tenders, several miles, and piled them up against the stone bridge as easily as it carried a box of clothespins.

At the head of the iron company's works was a great pile of iron in pieces eight feet long and a foot and a half thick either way. The flood toppled these over. In the half charred raft above the bridge are found great boilers, ma.s.ses of iron, twisted beams and girders from bridges, heavy safes, pieces of railroad track, a hundred car wheels, mixed with every conceivable object of household use--pianos, sofas, dressing cases, crockery, trunks and their contents.

Yet in all that ma.s.s it is impossible to find any trace of that pile of bricks built into the business houses of the town; nor yet upon the banks, nor in the heaps of sand which, when the flood went down, were left here and there, is there any trace of the material of the building except the lumber. In the opinion of experts, all this stuff must have been ground into powder and swept down the river. Johnstown will never resume its former importance. A curse will hang over this beautiful valley as long as this generation lasts. The sanitary experts who have examined the place say that in all probability it will be plague ridden for years and years.

Decomposing Bodies in the Wreck.

The ma.s.sive stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad, opposite the Cambria Iron Works, marks the point of demarcation between the borough of Johnstown and that of Cambria City. The changes in the situation which have occurred since the eventful Friday have not been numerous.

The wreckage impacted beneath the arches has been removed from three of them, leaving four, which are closed by ma.s.ses of timber and drift material. I climbed over the debris in the famous cul-de-sac and reached the second from the Johnstown side after half an hour's labor. The appearance was singular. Beneath the conglomeration of timber which filled the cavity of the arch to a distance of twenty-five feet from the top the waters of the Conemaugh flowed swiftly.

There was a network of telegraph wires, iron rods and metal work of Pullman cars stretched across from stone work to stone work on either side. The gridiron, as it were, penetrated far down into the water, and it had proved sufficiently strong to resist the onward rush of the lighter flotsam which swept before the onrolling wave. Lodged in this strange pile was the body of a horse. Deep among the meshes a terrible spectacle presented itself. There were the bodies of three people--a woman, a child and a laborer with hobnailed shoes. They were beyond the reach of the workers who are clearing the wreck near to the bridge and the latter will be unable to reach the corpses until a considerable amount of blasting with dynamite has been done. There was a faint odor of decomposition and another day will cause the vicinity of the viaduct to suggest a charnel house to the olfactory senses. There are many other bodies, no doubt, beneath the debris and prevented from floating down the stream by the ruins.

Cambria City Paralyzed.

Conemaugh City was connected with the Cambria Iron Works, on the opposite side of the Conemaugh, by a temporary suspension bridge of steel wire. The bridge was originally for two railways--a narrow and a broad gauge--and a footway. It was swept away before the reservoir burst, according to all accounts. Cambria City, or rather a fringe of houses along the higher ground of the bank, the remaining portion of a once prosperous town, is absolutely paralyzed by the stunning blow which has befallen it. There are but few people at work among the debris. The clean sweep of the flood left little wreckage behind. A few sad-faced women wandered about and poked in the sand and among the broken stone which now covers the location of their former homes. The men who were saved have returned to their work at the Cambria mills, and the survivors among their families are stowed in the houses which remain intact. There must have been at least one thousand lives lost from Cambria City.

There has been no attempt to replace the bridge at "Ten Acre," as the point below Cambria City is called. The banks of the Conemaugh remain covered with debris. In many places the ma.s.ses are piled twenty-five feet high. The people are clearing their land by burning the unwonted acc.u.mulations. Only an occasional body is found. Most of the 200 corpses which have been buried at Nineveh were found in the bushes which fringe the river. All the way to Freeport the acc.u.mulation of debris may be seen.

Kindly Care for the Helpless.

There is to-day no lack of supplies, save at Cambria City, which has been overlooked and neglected, but where the dest.i.tution is great. The people there are in great want of food. Bread has given out, and ham is about the only food to be obtained. In only one of the wrecked houses left untouched by the flood I found from twenty to twenty-five refugees.

The commissary at the Pennsylvania Railroad depot is heaped so high with stores that distribution goes on with difficulty. The Grubbtown commissary is in the same condition. The Red Cross people got fairly to work in their supply tent to-day, and during the morning alone distributed five hundred packages of clothing. Their hospital on the hill, back of Kernville, is in excellent order, and the patients quartered in the village houses are comfortably situated. There have been no deaths at the Cambria hospital. The doctors there have cared for 500 cases indoors and out. Even Grandma Teeter is doing well. She was taken out of the wreck at the bridge on Sat.u.r.day with her right arm crushed. It had to be amputated, and the old woman--she is eighty-three years of age--stood the operation finely.

Miss Hinckley, of Philadelphia, is busy in Kernville making known the plans of the Children's Aid Society. She does an immense amount of running about and visiting houses. Many children made orphans by the flood are now being cared for. There are a hundred or more of them; just how many no one knows.

"I have great difficulty," said Miss Hinckley to me to-day, "to persuade the people who have taken children to care for that our society can be trusted to take charge of what will surely be a burden to them. All my work now is to inspire confidence. We have received hundreds of letters from people anxious to adopt children. They are ready now in the first flush of sympathy, but I am afraid that they will not be willing to take the children when we are ready to place them."

Many Dead Still in the Ruins.

The ruins still shelter a ghastly load of dead. Every hour at least one new body is uncovered and borne on a rough stretcher to some one of the many morgues. The sight loses none of its sadness and pathos by its commonness; only the horror is gone, giving place to apathy and stupor.

Stalwart men, in mud-stained, working clothes, bring up the body, the face covered with a cloth. The crowds part and gaze at the burned corpse as it pa.s.ses. At the morgue it is examined for identification, washed and prepared for burial. Not more than half of these recovered now are identified.

The vast majority fill nameless but numbered graves, and the descriptions are much too indefinite to hope for identification after burial. What can you expect from a description like this, picked out at random: "Woman, five feet four inches tall, long hair?" The body of Eugene Hannon, twenty-two, found yesterday near the First Presbyterian Church, was identified to-day by his father. He was a member of the League of American Wheelmen, and his bicycle was found within a few yards of his body. The father will lay the wrecked bicycle on the coffin of his son.

Just now a woman, still young and poorly dressed, went by the shed where I am writing, sobbing most pitifully. She lost her husband and children in the flood and is on the verge of insanity.

Finding Solace in Work.

The day opened with heavy rain and an early morning thunder storm. The hillside streams were filled to the banks and everything was dripping.

The air was chilly and damp, and daylight was slow in coming to this valley of desolation and death. At an early hour the valley, where so many have gone to rest, presented a most dismal scene. It looked, indeed, like the valley of the dead. Nothing was moving, and all remained within the meagre shelter offered them till the day had fairly begun. As the day advanced, the tented hills began to show signs of life, smoke arose from many a camp fire, and on every eminence surrounding this valley of desolation could be seen the guards moving among the tented villages.

The weather was most unpleasant for any one to be outdoors, but it apparently had no effect on the people here, for as soon as the early breakfast was over the thousands of workmen could be seen going to their work, and soon the whole valley that in the early morning hours was asleep was a teeming throng of life and activity. While the rain was far from pleasant to the workers and many helpers, it was certainly providential that the cool weather is continuing in order to prevent the much-dreaded decomposition of the hundreds of human bodies yet unrecovered and the thousands of animals that perished in the flood. The air this morning, while tainted to some extent with the fumes arising from the decaying bodies, was not near so bad as it would have been had the morning been hot and sultry.