The Johnstown Flood

“The country seemed hell-bent for a glorious new age, and Johnstown, clearly, was right up there booming along with the best of them.”

In the late 19th century, the industrial revolution was in full swing, and towns where steel production reigned flourished almost without exception. Johnstown had proved to be a reliable steel town where there was always work. It may not have compared to the biggest and best steel towns (Pittsburgh, for example), but it had a bright future that would ultimately be wiped out and set back quite a bit in the aftermath of the disaster.

“When the downpour began, George and Mathilde did not think much of it, except that there would almost certainly be high water in the morning. But the thought bothered them very little, except for the inconveniences there might be. They listened to the rain drum on the roof and were glad to be inside.”

Noting the general reaction to the storm the evening before the deluge is helpful to understanding how the hours immediately preceding the disaster were perceived. The opinions of various townsfolk reveal the prevailing view that the night’s rain was not unusual. While the night would take a turn for the worse, rain to the point of flooding was nothing new in these parts of the country.

“When the water was up in the spring, the lake covered about 450 acres and was close to seventy feet deep in places. The claim, in 1889, was that it was the largest man-made lake in the country, which it was not. But even so, as one man in Johnstown often told his children, it was ‘a mighty body of water to be up there on the mountain.’”

Many mistakenly believed that the lake held back by the South Fork dam was the largest in the country. While erroneous, the lake was, in fact, enormous and unlike anything else that existed at the time (purely from the imagination and skilled craft of those who desired to build such a thing in so strange a place). Some people also believed it almost unnatural to have a massive lake on the side of the mountain.

“Some of the people in Johnstown who were, as they said, ‘privileged’ to visit the club on August Sundays brought home vivid descriptions of young people gliding over the water under full sail.”

The lake and resort on the mountain—at the South Fork club—were considered something of another world by those living in the town. The fact that there was a place where sailboats could glide around high up in the mountains was almost magical, and the division between the two communities was only enforced by the public display of wealth and opulence, symbolized by the presence of the sailboats on the manufactured lake.

“It was a curious paradox; the more the city prospered, the more uncomfortable it became living there. Progress could be downright repressive. But fortunately for the Pittsburgh people, it was very much within their power to create and maintain a place so blessed with all of nature’s virtues.”

The nature of progress in Pittsburgh was such that the very thing that allowed many to achieve great wealth in the city—the steel industry—was precisely the thing that was driving them out of the city, especially for their leisure time. The steelworks created an environment that was less than ideal for living, yet this simultaneously allowed the financial means for better living to be had elsewhere.

“True, the dam needed a great deal of repair work after so many years of neglect, but that could be handled all right, and especially since the property could be had for such a good price.”

The dam’s condition was such that there was a general knowledge of its disrepair right from the start. When the various members of what would eventually become the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club began to acquire the land and rights to the area, the dam was clearly in need of repair soon, but this was considered a problem that could be easily dealt with in the future as long as the right amount of money was funneled toward it; the problem was that this never happened.

“According to lengthy studies made by civil engineering experts years later, they did a competent job. Certainly they went about it with considerable care and patience […]”

The various investigations and reports after the flood concluded that the dam had been quite well built. The issue was not with the dam as it had been constructed but how it had been poorly maintained over the years. The dam needed work, which would never be started.

“With the valley crowding up the way it was, the need for lumber and land was growing apace. As a result, more and more timber was being stripped off the mountains and near hills, and in Johnstown the river channels were being narrowed to make room for new buildings […]”

In addition to the dam being poorly maintained, the surrounding areas were not properly maintained either. The region’s lumber industry had stripped the hills of trees, an environmental impact that caused great amounts of erosion. Narrowing the river channels to make space for more housing also contributed to the flood’s outsized impact.

“No one on the mountain could remember there ever being a night like it.”

While the town was used to rain and storms, and even the occasional flooding from being in a valley at the bottom of a mountain, nobody could remember ever experiencing a night of rain like that one. While the dam was certainly much to blame in itself, it was beyond doubt that the unprecedented rainfall and stormy conditions pushed it to its breaking point.

“In any case, later studies by civil engineers indicated that the water charged into the valley at a velocity and depth comparable to that of the Niagara River as it reaches Niagara Falls.”

The flood coming through town was not a slow and gradual thing that merely submerged everything within sight; it was rather an unavoidable wall of death that would completely raze the community to the ground. The amount of water held in the lake coming down the mountain at full force was a devastating event.

“Most of the people in Johnstown never saw the water coming; they only heard it; and those who lived to tell about it would for years after try to describe the sound of the thing as it rushed on them.”

Describing the experience in this manner emphasizes that the flood was a surprise and came out of nowhere. For most people, the only warning they had was the sound until the moment that the water swept them away. As the author noted, the rush of water sweeping through the town was akin to Niagara Falls, so the sound of a waterfall is what most people would remember long after the event had faded into their memory.

“But by far the worst of the night’s horrors was the fire at the bridge. Minnie Chambers, the girl who clung to the roof of the Cambria works, said later that she could hear screaming from the bridge all through the night.”

While the flood was a disaster without parallel in the region, the most horrific aspect of the flood was the fire at the bridge. When the flood swept through town, most people drowned immediately or escaped to higher ground and safety. At the bridge, however, the fire blazed through the night with those stuck on the bridge and in the floating debris piled up against the stone in the current.

“But even for those who had somehow succeeded in getting to the high ground in time, even for those who were uninjured or were lucky enough to have a roof to sleep under, there was the indescribable agony of remembering what they had seen, and not knowing what had become of others.”

Though over relatively quickly, the entire event would be a source of lasting trauma for the survivors. Seeing loved ones—family, friends, neighbors—dies or be injured or swept away out of sight was enormously painful. In many cases, the survivors didn’t know who had died and who had survived, and where their surviving loved ones might be if they made it through the night.

“Nearly all of Johnstown had been destroyed. That it was even the same place was very difficult to comprehend.”

In plenty of other natural disasters, most of a location remains intact to some degree. Fires, earthquakes, hailstorms, and many other disastrous events do not fundamentally change the landscape of an entire town. The flood, however, acted like a gigantic eraser, simply wiping out the town and washing it clean. The water had swept the town away in most places, leaving little to no trace of what had been there before.

“Telephone poles, giant chunks of machinery, trees with all their bark shredded off, dead horses and pieces of dead horses, and countless human corpses were strewn everywhere.”

One of the grimmer facts of the flood’s aftermath was what remained behind after so much was washed away). What remained from the flood was usually the larger items of debris, and the corpses of the dead, be they animal or human. The problem was that those who were left behind were not in any condition to bury the dead quickly or efficiently. Thus, the town had become something like a battlefield strewn with the dead who could not be taken anywhere else.

“The problems to be faced immediately were enormous and critical.”

Due to the extensive nature of the disaster, there was very little help available within the town itself. If the flood had been smaller or more localized, then the surviving parts of the city could have propped up what had been destroyed. Since the flood struck the entire town, wiping out everything, the town couldn’t help itself—problems of food, water, shelter, medicine, emergency surgery, orphaned children and infants, all of them and more bore down on the townsfolk immediately.

“People on the hillsides whose houses had escaped harm and farmers from miles out in the country began coming into town bringing food, water, and clothing.”

As with many catastrophic events, the tragedy was an opportunity for the town’s people to band together. Those who had the means quickly rallied to help those affected by the flood. Neighbors took care of neighbors.

“And so along with all the others heading for Johnstown there came more reporters (perhaps a hundred or more), telegraph operators, editors, authors, artists, photographers.”

It was inevitable that the greatest disaster story of the century would attract newspapers and reporters. Almost immediately, they began to flood into town. The majority were respectful, genuinely searching for the truth and the human stories, though some were antagonistic toward those who wanted little to do with those who could profit from their misfortune.

“The Boston Post carried little else on its front page for twelve days running. It was called ‘The Great Calamity,’ ‘The Nation’s Greatest Calamity,’ ‘The Historic Catastrophe.’”

The newspapers ran accounts of the tragedy that emphasized the outsize importance of the event, but even the most hyperbolic of headlines weren’t too far off the mark. The flood was as big as the papers made it out to be this time, and the nation was prepared to consume news of the calamity for days and weeks. No wonder the event was the priority story in the country’s biggest papers for half a month.

“The enormous sympathy aroused by the newspaper accounts, the pictures, the songs and poems, brought on the greatest outpouring of popular charity the country had ever seen.”

The newspapers ran nothing but the most hyperbolic headlines every day for weeks, but this kind of coverage and notoriety resulted in an outsized reaction of charitable giving by those who read the stories. The deep tragedy of the circumstances brought out the best in people, and the nation responded appropriately by flooding the town with donations of money, goods, and services.

“The plain fact was that no one who was interviewed had anything good to say about the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, its members, or its dam.”

The town’s inhabitants resented those who were far better off than they were, especially since they could escape and leave town almost immediately, avoiding the consequences of the flood. The blame was shifted completely to the club, the faulty dam, and those who should have had the money, the expertise, and the opportunity to have avoided the flood in the first place.

“The full report which appeared in the issue of Engineering News dated June 15 said that the original dam had been ‘thoroughly well built,’ but that contrary to a number of previously published descriptions, it had not been constructed with a solid masonry core.”

Once the investigation had been launched and concluded, the findings were that the dam had been constructed according to code and regulations and that there was nothing wrong with the dam from its original build. The problem lay in the fact that the dam had not been maintained appropriately and repairs were done, not in the dam’s original construction or design.

“If a person was to come to me as an attorney and want me to bring suit against the company for damages resulting from the flood, I could not do so, because there are no grounds for such a suit.”

In the aftermath of the flood, inquiries were made about the possible legal ramifications and liabilities concerning the members of the South Fork club and those who should have been responsible for the dam’s upkeep and repairs. The issue became one of perceived liability: While the members of the club should have dealt with the dam as a collective, placing the blame on any individual member would have been extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, since it was a collective failure and not the result of any one person’s malice or ignorance.