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History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.Johnson, Willis Fletcher

History

History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.

Name: History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.
Author: Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Floods -- Pennsylvania -- Johnstown (Cambria County)

"The railroad is in a terrible condition. The day express and the
limited, which left Pittsburg on Friday morning, are lying between
Johnstown and Conemaugh on the east, having been cut off by the flood.
Linemen were sent down from our train at every station to repair the
telegraph wires which are damaged. Tremendous efforts are being exerted
to repair the injury sustained by the railroad, and it is only a
question of a couple of days until through communication is
reëstablished. Our homeward trip was marked by a succession of sad
spectacles. At Blairsville intersection two little girls lay dead, and
in a house taken from the river was the body of a woman. Some idea of
the force of the flood may be had from the statement that freight cars,
both loaded and empty, had been lifted bodily from the track, and
carried a distance of several blocks, and deposited in a graveyard in
the outskirts of the town, where they were lying in a mass mixed up with
tombstones and monuments."

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE CAMBRIA IRON CO'S STORE.]




CHAPTER XXI.


Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be gathered together. It
is humiliating to human nature to record it, but it is nevertheless
true, that amid all the suffering and sacrifice, and heroism and
generosity that was displayed in this awful time, there arose some of
the basest passions of unbridled vice. The lust of gain led many
skulking wretches to rob and despoil, and even to mutilate the bodies of
the dead. Pockets were searched. Jewels were stolen. Finger-rings and
ear-rings were torn away, the knife often being used upon the poor, dead
clay to facilitate the spoliation. Against this savagery the better
elements of the populace sternly revolted. For the time there was no
organized government. But outraged and indignant humanity soon
formulates its own code of laws. Pistol and rope and bludgeon, in the
hand of honesty, did effective work. The reports of summary lynchings
that at first were spread abroad were doubtless exaggerated, but they
had a stern foundation of truth; and they had abundant provocation.

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