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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)

"Standing now at the bridge," says a visitor on Monday, "where this vast
whirlpool struggled for exit, the air is heavy with smoke and foul with
nameless odors from a mass of wreckage. The area of the triangular
space where the awful whirlpool revolved is said to be about four square
miles. The area of the space covered by this smoking mass is sixty
acres. The surface of this mass is now fifteen feet below the top of the
bridge and about thirty below the point on the bluff where the surface
of the whirlpool lashed the banks. One ragged mass some distance above
the bridge rises several feet above the general level, but with that
exception the surface of the débris is level. It has burned off until it
reached the water, and is smouldering on as the water gradually lowers.
On the right bank, at about where was the highest water level, a
detachment of the Pittsburg Fire Department is throwing two fitful
streams of water down into the smoke, with the idea of gradually
extinguishing the fire. In the immensity of the disaster with which they
combat their feeble efforts seem like those of boys with squirt guns
dampening a bonfire. About the sixty acres of burning débris, and to the
left of it from where it begins to narrow toward Stony Creek Gap, there
is a large area of level mud, with muddy streams wandering about in it.
This tract of mud comprises all of the triangle except a thin fringe of
buildings along the bluff on the Pennsylvania Railroad. A considerable
number of houses stand on the high ground on the lower face of the
central mountain and off to the right into Stony Creek Gap. The fringe
along the Pennsylvania Railroad is mostly of stores and other large
brick buildings that are completely wrecked, though not swept away. The
houses on the higher ground are unharmed; but down toward the edge they
fade away by degrees of completeness in their wreckage into the yellow
level of the huge tract over which the mighty whirlpool swept. Off out
of sight, in Stony Creek Gap, are fringes of houses on either side of
the muddy flat.

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

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