Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's HistoryGodbey, Allen Howard
History
Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History
Godbey, Allen Howard
Disasters
Mr. Calliver, a machinist, had his dwelling in one of the upper wards of
the city. His wife, an invalid, had not walked for seven years. He was
watching the flood, and telling his neighbors that the worst was already
past, when, looking up the river, he saw houses bounding from their
places and skurrying towards him. He shouted to his family at once to
flee to the attic, but, before they could reach it they were knee-deep
in water. The house was floated, and borne swiftly away, but fortunately
did not turn over. It drifted out of the main current, struck upon
something, and was held fast, while other buildings were drifted onward.
Union street school house was near, and to this place, late in the
afternoon, by clambering over the accumulated drift, it became possible
to escape. Here they found themselves in the company of nearly two
hundred others rescued in various ways. Some were crippled, some were
shivering with cold, and all had lost their nearest and dearest friends.
Many were in awful suspense concerning the fate of loved ones. A
sleepless, endless night dragged its slow hours along, and when at last
Mr. Calliver, watching anxiously from the roof, saw the first gleam in
the east, he cried out in an ecstasy, “It is morning! it is morning!”
After deliverance came, being curious to know what it was that had so
opportunely arrested his floating house, he made examination, and found
that, of several open cars that had drifted into the neighborhood, one
had dropped endwise into a cellar, and his house driven upon the end
that was elevated had been penetrated with the shaft of the brake-wheel,
and securely held in that place.
Rev. David J. Beale, D.D., pastor of the Presbyterian church, to whose
authentic and thrillingly interesting book “Through the Johnstown
Flood,” we are principally indebted for our statement of facts, and to
which the reader is referred for a fuller account, records an
experience, which, like those already narrated, serves to show that the
visitation was as sudden as it was awful. His first intimation of the
coming ruin was a roar, increasing like that of an approaching train,
and a moment later the torrent had struck his residence. Urging in
advance of him his family and two neighbors who were present, he rushed
up stairs, and reaching the second floor found himself already
waist-deep in water. At that instant, a man was shot by the force of the
current through the window, and to the sudden interrogatories, “Who are
you? Where did you come from?” breathless and strangling, he could only
answer, “Woodvale.” He had been carried on a floating roof a mile and a
quarter, and as it violently struck the parsonage, he was pitched from
his hold and dashed through the window. In another minute the whole
company were in the third story, witnesses, blanched and mute, of the
awful scene of destruction and death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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