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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 force of the current was truly appalling. The best evidence of its
force is exhibited in the mass of débris south of the Pennsylvania
bridge. Persons on the hillsides declare that houses, solid from their
foundation stones, were rushed on to destruction at the rate of thirty
miles an hour. On one house forty persons were counted; their cries for
help were heard far above the roaring waters. At the railroad bridge the
house parted in the middle, and the cries of the unfortunate people were
smothered in the engulfing waters.

At the Cambria Iron Works a huge hickory struck the south brick wall of
the rolling mill at an angle, went through it and the west wall, where
it remains. A still more extraordinary incident is seen at the
foot-bridge of the Pennsylvania station, on the freight track built for
the Cambria Iron Works. The sunken track and bridge are built in a
curve. In clearing out the track the Cambria workmen discovered two huge
bridge trusses intact, the larger one 30 feet long and 10 feet high. It
lay close to the top of the bridge and had been driven into the cut at
least fifty feet.

It was with an impulse to the right side of the mountain that the great
mass of water came down the Conemaugh river. It was a mass of water with
a front forty feet high, and an eighth of a mile wide. Its velocity was
so great that its first sweep did little damage on either side. It had
no time to spread. Where it burst from the gap it swept south until it
struck the bridge, and, although it was ten feet or more deep over the
top of the bridge, the obstruction of the mass of masonry was so great
that the head of the rush of water was turned back along the
Pennsylvania Railroad bluff on the left, and, sweeping up to where it
met the first stream again, licked up the portion of the town on the
left side of the triangular plain. A great eddy was thus formed. Through
the Stony Creek Gap to the right there was a rush of surplus water. In
two minutes after the current first burst through, forty feet deep, with
a solid mass of water whirling around with a current of tremendous
velocity, it was a whirlpool vastly greater than that of ten Niagaras.
The only outlet was under and over the railroad bridge, and the
continuing rush of the waters into the valley from the gap was greater
for some time than the means of escape at the bridge.

[Illustration: RUINS SHOWING THE PATH OF THE FLOOD.]

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