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
There was a network of telegraph wires, iron rods and metal work of
Pullman cars stretched across from stone work to stone work on either
side. The gridiron, as it were, penetrated far down into the water, and
it had proved sufficiently strong to resist the onward rush of the
lighter flotsam which swept before the onrolling wave. Lodged in this
strange pile was the body of a horse. Deep among the meshes a terrible
spectacle presented itself. There were the bodies of three people--a
woman, a child and a laborer with hobnailed shoes. They were beyond the
reach of the workers who are clearing the wreck near to the bridge and
the latter will be unable to reach the corpses until a considerable
amount of blasting with dynamite has been done. There was a faint odor
of decomposition and another day will cause the vicinity of the viaduct
to suggest a charnel house to the olfactory senses. There are many other
bodies, no doubt, beneath the debris and prevented from floating down
the stream by the ruins.
Cambria City Paralyzed.
Conemaugh City was connected with the Cambria Iron Works, on the
opposite side of the Conemaugh, by a temporary suspension bridge of
steel wire. The bridge was originally for two railways--a narrow and a
broad gauge--and a footway. It was swept away before the reservoir
burst, according to all accounts. Cambria City, or rather a fringe of
houses along the higher ground of the bank, the remaining portion of a
once prosperous town, is absolutely paralyzed by the stunning blow which
has befallen it. There are but few people at work among the debris. The
clean sweep of the flood left little wreckage behind. A few sad-faced
women wandered about and poked in the sand and among the broken stone
which now covers the location of their former homes. The men who were
saved have returned to their work at the Cambria mills, and the
survivors among their families are stowed in the houses which remain
intact. There must have been at least one thousand lives lost from
Cambria City.
There has been no attempt to replace the bridge at "Ten Acre," as the
point below Cambria City is called. The banks of the Conemaugh remain
covered with debris. In many places the masses are piled twenty-five
feet high. The people are clearing their land by burning the unwonted
accumulations. Only an occasional body is found. Most of the 200 corpses
which have been buried at Nineveh were found in the bushes which fringe
the river. All the way to Freeport the accumulation of debris may be
seen.
Kindly Care for the Helpless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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