The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
The blackened timber left from this fire, wedged in tightly above the
bridge, is the only gorge at which workmen have labored all this week
with dynamite and monstrous cranes. In it and below it are unnumbered
hundreds of bodies. How many perished in that frightful fire will never
be known. Only a small proportion of the bodies can ever be found. Some
were burned so that nothing but a handful of ashes remained, and that
was swept away long ago with the torrent. Some were buried deep in the
sand, and some have been carried down and hidden in sand banks and
slews. Many will be destroyed by dynamite, and some will have
disappeared long before the great flood of rubbish can be removed. Of
all the horrible features of this dreadful story none is more
heartrending than the story of that fire. It began about five o'clock
that afternoon and went on all night and all the next day, and
smouldered until Monday noon. Its progress was retarded somewhat by the
rain and by the soaking of the material in the water, but this was only
an added horror, for it prolonged the anguish for those imprisoned in
the great raft who plainly saw their approaching death.
Those who saw this sight from the shore cannot speak of it now and will
hardly be able to speak of it as long as they live without tears.
Imagination could not picture a situation more harrowing to human
feeling than to stand there and watch that horrible scene without being
able to rescue the prisoners or even alleviate their sufferings.
Ruins Left to Tell the Tale.
Just below the stone bridge are the great works of the Cambria Iron
Company. They occupy the eastern bank of the stream for a distance of
half a mile. The flood, tearing over the bridge, descended upon these
works and tore the southernmost end of them to pieces. The rest of the
buildings escaped, but none of the works were swept away in the torrent.
An iron bridge used jointly by the public and by the iron company to
transport its coal from the mines across the river was caught by the
very front of the flood and tossed away as if built of toothpicks.
Looking from the stone arch bridge, the iron company's buildings, the
lower town school house, three of the buildings which divided the flood,
a church, part of a brick residence and a little cluster of brick
business houses, is all that can be seen above the yellow waste. Why
these buildings are left it is impossible to say. The school house,
except for most of the windows being battered in and the scars and dents
driven into it from the passing wreckage, is almost uninjured, although
it stands directly in the centre of the flood.
Locomotives Swimming in the Torrent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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