![]() In the weeks and months that followed, the city gradually rebuilt. Several of the club members, including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, also supported the relief and rebuilding efforts with donations. Clara Barton and the recently formed American Red Cross arrived to provide medical assistance and emergency shelter and supplies. To help the thousands displaced by the flood, people from across the country sent money, clothing and food. The reporters wrote wrenching stories of tragedy and heroism, accompanied by photographs and illustrations of the horrific damage. When the count was completed, they would report that the flood had killed 2,209 people and leveled four acres of downtown Johnstown. Even as the waters were receding, hundreds of journalists descended upon the city to report on the deadliest natural disaster in the nation's history. After dark, however, the thirty acres of debris, at places forty feet high, that had piled up behind the bridge caught on fire and burned through the night, blanketing the ravaged town in a dark cloud of acrid smoke.ģ0 acres of flood debris backed up behind the bridge and then caught fire. ![]() The flood met its first serious resistance at the Pennsylvania Railroad's Stone Bridge, which saved the lives of thousands by not breaking. Next came the great wall of water sixty-three feet high that smashed into the city, "crushing houses like eggshells" and snapping trees like toothpicks. Next they saw the dark cloud and mist and spray that preceded it, and were assaulted by a wind that blew down small buildings. The residents of Johnstown heard the speeding wall of death, a roar like thunder. Scouring its way towards Johnstown, the flood picked up several hundred boxcars, a dozen locomotives, more than 100 houses and a growing number of corpses. Next in line was Woodvale, a town of about 1,000, that the torrent smashed with equal ferocity. ![]() Roaring down the narrow path of the Little Conemaugh River, a seventy-foot wall of water, filled with huge chunks of dam, boulders and whole trees, smashed into the small town of Mineral Point and swept away all traces of its existence. In less than forty-five minutes, twenty million tons of water poured into the valley below. on May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam gave way. Immigrant laborers toiled through most part of the day, first to increase the height of the dam, and then to dig spillways and remove the obstructions in the overflows.Īt approximately 3:00 p.m. As the waters continued to rise, Unger ordered last-ditch efforts to prevent the lake from overflowing and dispatched a member to the nearest town to telegraph a warning to Johnstown. On the morning of May 31, 1889, after a night of heavy rainfall, club president Elias Unger was alarmed to find that the water level of the lake had risen more than two feet since the previous evening. ![]() It also lacked discharge pipes at the base of the dam that would permit its owners to drain water from the reservoir. Repaired back in 1879, the year that the directors had purchased the reservoir and land along its shore for wealthy Pittsburgh families seeking a summer retreat, the dam had a four-foot bulge in the middle. The barriers also caught debris and undermined its ability to contain the water rising above its peak. They had cut its height to permit two lanes of traffic across the top and added barriers in the overflows that would prevent fish from spilling into the river below. In the meantime, unbeknownst to the residents below, the directors of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club had made modifications to the dam. Sure, it might give way someday and flood the city with water, but floods were a common occurrence in Johnstown, and the dam would probably not break in their lifetimes. But year after year the dam had held, so the people of Johnstown stopped worrying. The water in the rivers had risen so high that folks began to wonder whether the South Fork Dam would give way, as it had back in 1862. It had been raining heavily for two days. View of downtown Johnstown Stoneycreek River on left of photo. ![]()
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