Loading your reading…

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 stream of human beings that was swept before the angry floods was
something most pitiful to behold. Men, women and children were carried
along frantically shrieking for help, but their cries availed them
nothing. Rescue was impossible. Husbands were swept past their wives,
and children were borne along, at a terrible speed, to certain death,
before the eyes of their terrorized and frantic parents. Houses,
out-buildings, trees and barns were carried on the angry flood of waters
as so much chaff. Cattle standing in the fields were overwhelmed, and
their carcasses strewed the tide. The railroad tracks converging on the
town were washed out, and wires in all directions were prostrated.

Down through the Packsaddle came the rushing waters. Clinging to
improvised rafts, constructed in the death battle from floating boards
and timbers, were agonized men, women and children, their heart-rending
shrieks for help striking horror to the breasts of the onlookers. Their
cries were of no avail. Carried along at a railway speed on the breast
of this rushing torrent, no human ingenuity could devise a means of
rescue.

It is impossible to describe briefly the suddenness with which the
disaster came. A warning sound was heard at Conemaugh a few minutes
before the rush of water came, but it was attributed to some
meteorological disturbance, and no trouble was borrowed because of the
thing unseen. As the low, rumbling noise increased in volume, however,
and came nearer, a suspicion of danger began to force itself even upon
the bravest, which was increased to a certainty a few minutes later,
when, with a rush, the mighty stream spread out in width, and when there
was no time to do anything to save themselves. Many of the unfortunates
were whirled into the middle of the stream before they could turn
around; men, women and children were struggling in the streets, and it
is thought that many of them never reached Johnstown, only a mile or two
below.

At Johnstown a similar scene was enacted, only on a much larger scale.
The population is greater and the sweeping whirlpool rushed into a
denser mass of humanity. The imagination of the reader can better depict
the spectacle than the pen of the writer can give it. It was a twilight
of terror, and the gathering shades of evening closed in on a panorama
of horrors that has few parallels in the history of casualties.

No reviews yet