THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD

National disaster

On May 31, 1889, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, one of the nation's greatest disasters took place. 2,209 people lost their lives in the great Johnstown flood. But this was no ordinary flood. Perhaps not really a flood at all, as a rushing mountain of water came roaring down the valley, descending on the town. Partly to blame was nature, and partly to blame were some of the richest and most influential men of their time.

In 1879, Benjamin Ruff bought some abandoned property from the Pennsylvania Railroad east of Johnstown with the hopes of turning it into a private summer resort where rich people could get away from hectic city life and relax in the mountains. The property included an earthen dam which formed a lake out of South Fork Creek, one of the best trout streams in the state. Shares in the venture were sold, a 47-room clubhouse was built, some elaborate three-story private vacation homes - called "cottages" - were built, and work was done to repair the dam that formed the lake. Unfortunately, the man in charge of the repairs had no engineering degree, and noone else in a position of power seemed to take seriously warnings that the dam was not strong enough for the water behind it.

The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, as it was called, was a simple place, compared with other elite spots of the time, such as Newport or Cape May. However, its members were some of the richest and most powerful men in America, mostly from Pittsburgh, and in power, money, and influence, it was the rival of any. Among the elite were: Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron and at worst the second richest man in America; Henry Clay Frick, who made a fortune in coke as well as being one of Carnegie's most trusted officers; Henry Phipps, Jr., the financial overseer of the Carnegie empire; Andrew Mellon, of banking and many other businesses, and who would be the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under three presidents; Philander Chase Knox, a lawyer who would become the U.S. Attorney General under two presidents and Secretary of State under a third; and Samuel Rea, a future president of the national powerhouse Pennsylvania Railroad.

The lake was called Lake Conemaugh by the club members, and was known by several other names as well, but mostly the locals called it the South Fork Dam. It sat on South Fork Creek, upstream from the little town of South Fork, where the creek flows into the Litle Conemaugh River. That river then flows to Johnstown where it joins Stony Creek to form the Conemaugh River.

The dam itself seemed to be a constant worry to many of the residents of South Fork and Johnstown, and settlements in between. There were many rumors and scares that the dam was about to break, but none had come true. Eventually, the whole thing came to be more of a joke to most of the locals, as each warning came and went. And although most believed the dam would indeed break some day - probably in the distant future - common wisdom seemed to be that it would raise the level of the river a foot or two, causing serious inconvenience but little chance of life-threatening problems.

The end of May, 1889, brought heavy rains. Johnstown's downtown area was flooded, but this happened nearly every spring. The rains this year saturated the ground and swelled the rivers, and eventually became the heaviest downpour on record for the area. At the same time, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club had done two things that seemed quite proper at the time. They had raised the level of the lake to make it larger, and they had lowered the dam itself to make the crest of the dam wide enough for carriages to pass over two abreast. This added a great deal of water in the lake, and put more pressure on the dam. Also unnoticed, the dam had gotten lower in the center. This meant that if the water ran over the top of the dam, the center would give first, and at its weakest point. If the side of the dam would break first, the pressure from the water would not be as great at that point.

As people in low-lying areas beneath the dam moved their possessions out of their first floors and moved their animals to higher land, the water kept rising. Rumors of the South Fork Dam being in danger kept circulating, causing more and more people to begin to take the warnings seriously this time. Then, just after 3 o'clock in the afternoon of May 31, the water creeping over the top of the dam caused the dam to give way in the center, and a torrent of water, an estimated 20 million tons, was released to pour down the narrow river valley. The hills on both sides kept the water on course with nowhere else to go. The force has been compared to that of Niagra Falls, as if Niagra Falls was suddenly turned into the valley for the 35 to 45 minutes it took for the dam to empty.

The little town of South Fork was the first to be hit, with remarkably little damage. The town was built on the hillside, so that most of it was above the level of the water. In all, four lives were lost and just over twenty buildings were destroyed. Rushing down the narrow valley, the wall of water at times as much as 75 feet high, every building, animal, and tree was washed clean from the earth. At East Conemaugh, it tore through the town and trains at the yards and some delayed by the flooding. It gathered speed as the valley broadened out, and next hit the town of Woodvale, a model company town, the pride of the Cambria Iron Company. Looking more like a picturesque New England town, it would be wiped out of existence with hardly a trace of where it had been. Of nearly 1,000 residents, 314 of them would be killed in a matter of minutes. A huge amount of debris was now being driven by the water into Johnstown. The wall of water was described by some as a mountain of rubish coming down the valley.

As the wall of water hit Johnstown, everything in its path was destroyed. The wall, though, would run straight into a hillside that it could not defeat. This, however, brought only more problems for more people, as the water backed up and a wave charged upstream on Stoney Creek, destroying much that seemed to be out of harm's way. The hillside also caused the water to build up over top of the stone bridge, just downstream from the point where the Conemaugh River was formed by the Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek. Instead of the stone bridge being ripped out by the force of the water, the hillside had taken the blow and allowed the bridge to stand. But behind the bridge now piled up dead horse, trees, railroad cars, houses, and other things the flood had destroyed. This build up caused a huge dam about 40 feet high to be formed, spreading out the water over 30 acres of Johnstown. In the space of ten minutes, Johnstown was destroyed. Then, when the worst seemed to be over, the mountain of debris caught fire, possibly from some house's coal stove, and anyone still alive in the burning mass was soon burned alive.

The population of Johnstown was then about 10,000 people, 30,000 including all of the surrounding area. Of those, 2,209 people had been killed, including 99 entire families.1600 homes and 280 businesses were destroyed, including four square miles of downtown Johnstown.

People began pouring into Johnstown as soon as they could get there. First from Pittsburgh, and other nearby areas, came relief workers, supplies and reporters. It was very difficult to get there at first, because the entire area had been hit by the bad storms, and rails were not safe to travel in many places. Reporters sent out as many stories as they could write, as the world was anxious to hear of what became the biggest story since the assassination of Lincoln. Much reporting a first was exaggerated and sensationalized, but when things settled down and the truth was known, it seemed about as horrible as one could imagine. People in every part of the country raised and sent money.

Within a week the American Red Cross arrived in town. It had been formed in 1881 by Clara Barton, and she heself led a group of 50 doctors and nurses into town. She had helped in a few disasters since she had formed the American Red Cross, but this was the first major disaster that they had faced. She immediately set out to prove the value of such an organization. Setting up large tents as hospitals, building two hotels for the homeless people, helping in every way that was needed, she seemed to be everywhere during the five months she stayed. Already well known, the relief efforts at Johnstown spread her reputation and that of her organization. A total of $3,742,818.78 was contributed for this disaster relief.

The disaster is sometimes still today used to represent the worst disasters that one can think of. And in contrast to the reputaion of the Red Cross, the reputation of the wealthy industrial class was badly hurt. It seemed to many that the rich elite had been living it up, ignoring an impending disaster that it should have known about, and caused the horrible outcome. However, though many lawsuits were filed, none were succesful.