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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)

"It had all come so quickly that none of them seemed to realize what had
happened. The conductor of my train had been pulling frantically at the
bell-rope, and the train went spinning across the bridge. I sat in my
seat transfixed with horror. Houses were spinning through beneath the
bridge, and I did not know at what moment the structure would melt away
under the train. The conductor kept tugging at the bell-rope and the
train shot ahead again. We seemed to fairly leap over the yellow
torrents, and I wondered for an instant whether we had not left the
rails and were flying through the air. My heart gave a bound of relief
when we dashed into the forest on the hillside opposite the doomed town.
As the train sped along at a rate of speed that made me think the
engineer had gone mad, I took one look back upon the valley. What a
sight it was! The populous valley for miles either way was a seething,
roaring cauldron, through whose boiling surface roofs of houses and the
stand-pipes of mills protruded. The water was fairly piling up in a well
farther up, and I saw the worst had not yet come. Then I turned my eyes
away from the awful sight and tried not to even think until Pittsburg
was reached.

"I cannot see how it is possible for less than five thousand lives to
have been sacrificed in Johnstown alone. At least two-thirds of the town
was swept away. The water came so quickly that escape from the low
districts was impossible. People retreated to the upper floors of their
residences and stores until the water had gotten too deep to allow their
escape. When the big flood came the houses were picked up like
pasteboard boxes or collapsed like egg-shells. The advance of the flood
was black with houses, logs, and other debris, so that it struck
Johnstown with the solid force of a battering-ram. None but
eye-witnesses of the flood can comprehend its size and awfulness as it
came tumbling, roaring down upon the unprotected town."

[Illustration: TYPICAL SCENE IN JOHNSTOWN.]

The appearance of the flood at Sang Hollow, some miles below Johnstown,
is thus pictured by C. W. Linthicum, of Baltimore:

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

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