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
One of the few buildings that are left in this part of town is the fine
house of Mr. Geranheiser, of the Cambria Iron Company. It presents a
queer spectacle--that is common here but has not often been seen before.
The flood reached almost to the second floor and was strong enough to
cut away about half the house, leaving the rest standing. The whole
interior of the place can be seen just as the frightened inmates left
it. The carpets are torn up from the first floor, but the pictures are
still hanging on the walls and an open piano stands against the wall
full of mud; a Brussels carpet being halfway out of the second story on
the side where the wreck was and showing exactly how high the water
came. There was a centre table in the room and an open book on it.
Chairs stood about the room and the pictures were on the walls, and half
of the room was gone miles away.
Seven Acres of Wreckage.
Just below the bare plain where the business block of Johnstown stood,
and above the stone arch bridge on which the Pennsylvania Railroad
crossed the river, are seven acres of the wreckage of the flood. The
horrors that have been enacted in that spot, the horrors that are seen
there every hour, who can attempt to describe? Under and amid that mass
of conglomerate rubbish are the remains of at least one thousand persons
who died the most frightful of deaths.
This is the place where the fire broke out within twenty minutes after
the flood. It has burned ever since. The stone arch bridge acted as a
dam to the flood, and five towns were crushing each other against it. A
thousand houses came down on the great wave of water, and were held
there a solid mass in the jaws of a Cyclopean vise.
A kitchen stove upset. The mass took fire. A thousand people were
imprisoned in these houses. A thousand more were on the roofs. For most
of them there was no escape. The fire swept on from house to house. The
prisoners saw it coming and shrieked and screamed with terror, and ran
up and down their narrow quarters in an agony of fear.
Sights to Freeze Their Blood.
Thousands of people stood upon the river bank and saw and heard it all
and still were powerless to help. They saw people kneeling in the flames
and praying. They saw families gathered together with their arms around
each other and waiting for death. They saw people going mad and tearing
their hair and laughing. They saw men plunge into the narrow crevices
between the houses and seek death in the water rather than wait its
coming in the flames. Some saw their friends and some their wives and
children perishing before them, and some in the awful agony of the hour
went mad themselves and ran shrieking to the hillsides, and stronger men
laid down on the ground and wept.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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