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.
Anybody who has been telegraphing to Johnstown this week and getting no
answers, would understand the reason for the lack of answers if he could
see the piles of telegrams that are sent out here by train from
Pittsburgh. Four thousand came in one batch on Thursday. Half of them
are still undelivered, and yet there is probably no place in the country
where the Western Union Company is doing better work than here. The
flood destroyed not only the company's offices, but the greater part of
their wires in this part of the country. The office they established
here is in a little shanty with no windows and only one door which won't
close, and it handles an amount of outgoing matter, daily, that would
swamp nine-tenths of the city offices in the country. Incoming business
is now received in considerable quantities, but for several days so
great was the pressure of outgoing business that no attempt was made to
receive any dispatches. The whole effort of the office has been to
handle press matter, and well they have done it. But there will be no
efficient delivery service for a long time. The old messenger boys are
all drowned, and the other boys who might make messenger boys are also
most of them drowned, so that the raw material for creating a service is
very scant. Besides that, nobody knows nowadays where any one else
lives.
The amateur and professional photographers who have overrun the town for
the last few days came to grief on Friday. A good many of them were
arrested by the soldiers, placed under a guard, taken down to the Stony
Creek and set to lugging logs and timbers. Among those arrested were
several of the newspaper photographers, and these General Hastings
ordered released when he heard of their arrest. The others were made to
work for half a day. They were a mad and disgusted lot, and they vowed
all sorts of vengeance. It does seem that some notice to the effect that
photographers were not permitted in Johnstown should have been posted
before the men were arrested. The photographers all had passes in
regular form, but the soldiers refused even to look at these.
More sightseers got through the guards at Bolivar on Friday night, and
came to Johnstown on the last train. Word was telegraphed ahead, and the
soldiers met them at the train, put them under arrest, kept them over
night, and in the morning they were set to work in clearing up the
ruins.
The special detail of workmen who have been at work looking up safes in
the ruins and seeing that they were taken care of, reports that none of
the safes have been broken open or otherwise interfered with. The
committee on valuables reports that quantities of jewelry and money are
being daily turned into them by people who have found them in the ruins.
Often the people surrendering this stuff are evidently very poor
themselves. The committee believes that as a general thing the people
are dealing very honestly in this matter of treasure-trove from the
ruins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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