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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)

At Whitehall, N. G., there is a reservoir created by a dam three hundred
and twenty feet long across a valley half a mile from the village and
two hundred and sixty-six feet above it. A break in this dam would
release nearly six million gallons, and probably sweep away the entire
town. Norwich, N. Y., is supplied by an earthwork dam, with centre
puddle-wall, three hundred and twenty-three feet long and forty feet
high. It imprisons thirty million gallons and stands one hundred and
eighty feet above the village. At an elevation of two hundred and fifty
feet above the town of Olean N. Y., stands an embankment holding in
check two million, five hundred thousand gallons. Oneida, N. Y., is
supplied by a reservoir formed by a dam across a stream which controls
twenty-two million, three hundred and fifty thousand gallons. The dam is
nearly three miles from the village and at an altitude of one hundred
and ninety feet above it. Such are some of the reservoirs which threaten
other communities of our fair land.




CHAPTER XXVIII.


It is now the Thursday after the disaster, and amid the ruins of
Johnstown people are beginning to get their wits together. They have
quit the aimless wandering about amid the ruins, that marked them for a
crushed and despairing people. Everybody is getting to work and
forgetting something of the horror of the situation in the necessity of
thinking of what they are doing. The deadly silence that has prevailed
throughout the town is ended, giving place to the shouts of hundreds of
men pulling at ropes, and the crash of timbers and roofs as they pull
wrecked buildings down or haul heaps of débris to pieces. Hundreds more
are making an almost merry clang with pick and shovel as they clear away
mud and gravel, opening ways on the lines of the old streets.
Locomotives are puffing about, down into the heart of the town now, and
the great whistle at the Cambria Iron Works blew for noon yesterday and
to-day for the first time since the flood silenced it. To lighten the
sombre aspect of the ruined area, heightened by the cold gray clouds
hanging low about the hills, were acres of flame, where debris is being
got rid of. Down in what was the heart of the city the soldiers have
gone into camp, and little flags snap brightly in the high wind from
their acres of white tents.

The relief work seems now to be pretty thoroughly organized, and
thousands of men are at work under the direction of the committee. The
men are in gangs of about a hundred each, under foremen, with mounted
superintendents riding about overseeing the work.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.