The Hulbert House, built of brick, and one of the finest hotels in Johnstown, stood in the upper portion of the city. There were about sixty persons in it at the time of the catastrophe, and of these, the lives of forty-nine were lost. Many of these were in the office, when an unusual whistling of engines was heard. Imagining a fire had broken out in the midst of the flood, they all ran to the upper stories, except the proprietor, the clerk, and one guest. Two or three minutes later, the clerk walked to the window, and looked across the Conemaugh in the direction of Prospect Hill, and seeing what he mistook for a great cloud of dust, exclaimed, “My God, the hill is falling!” At that, the proprietor ran to the door, and looking up the street, realized at once the situation. Directing the other two to hasten upstairs and spread the alarm, he ran to the kitchen to warn the girls; then fleeing to the fourth floor, he reached it just as the building fell. One of the few survivors declares that the catastrophe overtook nearly all the guests no further advanced than to the foot of the stairway on the third floor, and as yet unapprized of the nature of their danger. Rev. D. M. Miller, pastor of the Presbyterian church in East Conemaugh, had his home in Johnstown. To him and his family the deluge came without a moment’s warning. They were in an upper room, fearing, suspecting nothing, till they saw houses not half a square away starting from their places, reeling and crackling onward over fences, telephone poles and fruit-trees, and jostling against each other. Before they could fly in any direction, they were waist-deep in water. Beneath the lower sash which was raised, Mr. Miller sprang out upon some floating timbers, urging his wife to follow. She, however, mounted the bed, which being instantly forced up to the ceiling she was almost smothered. The water had closed the opening beneath the sash, and up to her neck in water she now set herself desperately to effect an opening at the top of the window, but she only tore her hands in the vain attempt to wrench away the slat. Mr. Miller, by this time recovering from his first plunge, with one hand caught hold of the spout beneath the eaves, and with the other, battered through two panes of glass, cutting himself badly. Drawing up one foot, with it he now kicked out the sash, when his wife dived out under the lintel, expecting to reach footing on the roof of a small porch below. The porch, however, was gone, and she disappeared deep beneath the turbid flood. A moment later, by some violent ebullition of the water, she was thrown to the surface, and at once laid hold on the spout. Meanwhile, the house was drifting rapidly toward Stony Creek. When the vast number of houses adrift struck the hill beyond the stream there was a fearful rebound; many houses were crushed to splinters, many were upset, and scores of clinging wretches were mangled, killed, or plunged into the water and drowned. The current,