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.
No bodies have yet been brought to the surface by the operations with
dynamite, but indications of several buried beneath the surface are
evident. A short distance back from where the men are not at work,
bodies continue to be taken out from the surface of the raft at the rate
of ten or a dozen a day. The men this afternoon came across hundreds of
feet of polished copper pipe, which is said to have come from a Pullman
car. It was not known until then that there was a Pullman car in that
part of the raft. The remnants of a vestibule car are plainly seen at a
point a hundred feet away from this.
CHAPTER XXX.
The first thing that Johnstown people do in the morning is to go to the
relief stations and get something to eat. They go carrying big baskets,
and their endeavor is to get all they can. There has been a new system
every day about the manner of dispensing the food and clothing to the
sufferers. At first the supplies were placed where people could help
themselves. Then they were placed in yards and handed to people over the
fences. Then people had to get orders for what they wanted from the
Citizens Committee, and their orders were filled at the different relief
stations. Now the whole matter of receiving and dispensing relief
supplies has been placed in the hands of the Grand Army of the Republic
men. Thomas A. Stewart, commander of the Department of Pennsylvania, G.
A. R., arrived with his staff and established his headquarters in a tent
near the headquarters of the Citizens Committee, and opposite the
temporary post-office. Over this tent floats Commander Stewart's flag,
with purple border, bearing the arms of the State of Pennsylvania. The
members of his staff are: Quartermaster-General Tobin Taylor and his
assistant H. J. Williams, Chaplain John W. Sayres, and W. V. Lawrence,
quartermaster-general of the Ohio Department. The Grand Army men have
made the Adams Street relief station a central relief station, and all
the others, at Kernville, the Pennsylvania depot, Cambria City, and
Jackson and Somerset Street, sub-stations. The idea is to distribute
supplies to the sub-stations from the central station, and thus avoid
the jam of crying and excited people at the committee's headquarters.
The Grand Army men have appointed a committee of women to assist them in
their work. The women go from house to house, ascertaining the number of
people quartered there, the number of people lost from there in the
flood, and the exact needs of the people. It was found necessary to have
some such committee as this, for there were women actually starving, who
were too proud to take their places in line with the other women with
bags and baskets. Some of these people were rich before the flood. Now
they are not worth a dollar. A _Sun_ reporter was told of one man who
was reported to be worth $100,000 before the flood, but who now is
penniless, and who has to take his place in the line along with others
seeking the necessaries of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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