Show APPALLING FLOODS OV op may a freshet occurred id 10 the north fork river east of johnstown pa in the allegheny mountains causing the bursting of ft great reat reservoir and ani one of the most disastrous isa floods that ever occurred in the united states in order to understand the nature of the calamity it is geee necessary sary to w describe the location of the reservoir at johnstown the reser reservoir volf lies iles about two and a half miles northeast of johnstown and on the site of an old reservoir which chieh WOO one of the feeders of the pennsyl vanta vania canal this sheet of water was formerly known as aa carlat connie maugh lake it is from to SOU feet above the level of johnstown Johns being in the mountains ains it is abott about ad three and a half miles long a from a mile to one and a quarter miles wide and in some places ita it is feet in depth it holds bolds WOO water than any other reservoir gnp natural or artificial in th the e unita states the rhe lake has bas been quadra pled in size by artificial means mean s ft god was held in check by a dam to 1000 feet wide it was 90 feet in thickness at the base and its height was feet the top had a breadth of over 20 feet recognizing the menace which this lake presented ta ro the region below south pork fork the club which owned tha reservoir had the he dam inspected bf w the pennsyl varda ania railroad engineers once a month and their investigation showed bhat nothing less than some convulsion of nature would tear the barrier away the late steady rains increased the eolune of water in all the small mountain streams which were al ready ady swelled by a lesser rain earlier in the week it is evident that something in the nature of a cloudburst must have been the cullina on of the struggle of the water against the bank at about 5 p in may the lake burst the dam jam and che waters rushed down upon the doomed village of johnstown literally wiping it out of existence one dispatch stated ted that only two houses in the jovn own escaped being swept away or submerged scores or of dwellings were carried down with the torrent and hundreds of people were drowned owned hundreds Hundred of others were seen been clinging to floating objects which were borne on the bosom of the madly rushing waters the course of the torrent from the broken dam at the foot of the lake ake to johnstown is almost eight een n miles and with the exception 01 of one point the water passed through rough a narrow V shaped valley pour our miles below the dam lay the awn own of southfork where the southfork itself empties into con river the town con wined tallied about inhabitants and it Is 18 said four fifths of it is swept anav way pour four miles further down on the he Conne maugh river which runs ns partly parallel with the main main line ne of the pennsylvania railroad was the town of mineral point it had 1000 people 90 per cent of the houses being on a lint flat or close to the he river it seems impossible at his time to hope that any have es ped six miles further down was the town of Conne Connern maugh augh and here wone alone there was a topographical possibility lity of the spreading of the flood lt t contained 2500 inhabitants and abild d must be wholly devastated vale with 2000 people lay a mile below Conne maugh plat flat and one mue further down were johnstown and its cluster of city towns deluding cambria city and con nenaugh maugh which were built with ith a total population of on made M round and stretched along the right bank of the river at it ita verge ere the immense works of the cambria milbria ril bria iron and steel company who 0 have invested in their qt besides this there were man ny Y other large industrial establishments lish ments on the bank of the river almost the entire city of johns ovll wn was swimming about dead bodies baies were floating float in g abou arou around nd in I 1 n every direction action ec tion and almost every piece of movable timber was carrying from roe doomed city a corpse of human ay UY drifting with the waters god snows where the disaster over took johnstown about 6 in the evening As the train bearing the associated press reporter moved eastward the reports at each stop grew more appalling more gathered who had come from ibe the bolivia end of th the e pa passable ble portion of the road west westward they had seen but a small portion of the flood but enough to allow them to imagine the rest down through the packsaddle came the rushing waters and the heights of the wooded alleghenies looked down in solemn wonder at the scene it was the i the most terrible destruction that ever struck monongahela valley in the death battle from floating boards and timbers were agonized men women and children heartrending shrieks for help striking horror to the breasts of onlookers on lookers their cries were of no avail carried away at railroad speed on the breast of the rushing torrent no human ingenuity could devise means of rescue with pallid cheek and hair clinging wet and damp to her cheek a mother was seen grasping a floating timber while with the other arm she held her babe many towns on the banks of the Conne maugh were made to suffer by the terrible of water which rushed down its bed some of them were damaged but little others severely and still others were almost entirely destroyed hundreds of people were drowned and the sights witnessed by onlookers were pathetic and horrible beyond description the following is quoted from accounts contained in the dj dis batches just before reaching Snug hollow end of the main line of the pennsylvania road is a signal tower and the wen afen in it told stories of what they saw so piteous that I 1 could enot listen to half of it but here are some little odds and ends to the happenings they told me of A beautiful girl came down on the roof of a house which was swung in near the town she screamed to the operators to save her and one brave fellow walked as far into the river as he could and shouted to her to guide herself into shore with the butt of a plank S shafts a plucky girl and stood up 0 omber frail support in evident obedience to the command of the operator she made two or three bold strokes and actually stopped stop ed the course of the raft for an instant then it swerved from under her she tried to swim ashore but in a few seconds she was lost in the whirling waters something hit her for she lay quietly ly on her back with her face pallid and expressionless men and women in dozens in pairs and singly children boys big and little and wee babies were there among the awful confusion in the water drowning gasping struggling and fighting desperately for life two men on a tiny raft shot into the swiftest part of the current between them dressed in white and ana kneeling with her face turned heavenward was a girl six or seven years old when she came opposite the town she turned her face to the operator she was so close he could see the big tears on her cheeks and the pallor of death her face fearless men on th shore shouted to her t to keep up her heart and she resumed her devout attitude and disappeared under the trees of the projecting point a short distance below we could not see r her come out again said the operator and that was all of ef it do you see that fringe of trees pointing to the place where the little girl had bad gone out of sight well we saw scores of children swept in there I 1 believe that when the time comes they will find almost bodies of children in there among those bushes 11 just above new florence is the little town of nineveh it was here that I 1 found the first charnel house dead were there the larger portion of whom were women here it was that the awful work of havoc could be realized what had bad been fertile farms looked Jike fike worn out brick yards great trees had bad been twisted and torn like weeds and the broken household goods of hundreds of houses line the shores for miles thieves those who steal from the dead and unfortunate have been busy at work robbing trunks boxes and articles of furniture and there is nothing worth taking left except lumber every now and then ghastly outlines could be seen in the water being swept down the stream on june 2nd and when the waters had subsided johnstown was described as the most complete wreck that the imagination can portray probably a hundred and fifty buildings had been swept away from the face of the earth as though they had never existed main street from end to end was piled from fifteen to twenty feet b high agh with debris and in some instances as bi high 11 as the roofs of the houses th this s great mass of wreckage filled the street from curb to curb prom from the woolen mill above the island to the bridge a distance probably of two miles a strip of territory nearly half hav a mile in width bad been swept clean out not a stick of timber or one brick on the top of another being left to tell the story all day long men women and children were plodding about the desolate waste trying in vain to locate the boundaries of their former homes nothing but a wide expanse of mud ornamented here and there with heaps of driftwood remained however for their contemplation pla tion still these losses are as nothing comra compared red to the frightful sacrifices of human life to be seen on every hand band during all the solemn sunday alunday following the flood johnstown was drenched with the tears of stricken mortals and the air was filled with cries and sobs that came from breaking hearts there were scenes enacted every hour and minute that affected all beholders beh profoundly an utterly wretched woman named mrs fenn stood by a muddy pool trying to find some trace of her once bapty happy home she was half balf crazed grief and her eyes were swollen As the writer stepped I 1 to her side she raised her pallid and languid face and re marked they are all gone oh god be merciful to them my husband and my seven dear little children have been swept away down with the flood we were driven to a garret and the water followed us there it was death to remain so I 1 raised the window and one by one placed my darling sous sons on the driftwood trusting to the great creator As ae I 1 liberated the last ope my sweet little boy he looked at me and said mamma you always told me the lord would care for me will he care for me now I 1 saw him drift away with his loving face turned toward me and with a prayer on my lips for his deliverance he passed from my sight forever the next moment the roof crushed in and I 1 floated outside to be rescued fifteen minutes later on the roof of a house near renville morinville Mo if I 1 could find one of my darlings I 1 could bow to the will of agod I 1 have lost everything in the world but my life A handsome woman wandered through the depot where the bodies lay passing from one to another she sh fi nally finally lifted a paper covering from the face of a young woman with traces of beauty showing through the stains of the muddy water with a cry of anguish she reeled backward to be caught by a man who chanced to be passing in a moment or so she had calmed herself sufficiently to take one more look at the features of her dead she stood gazing at the unfortunate and dead woman who was a bister of the mourner until the body was as placed labed in a coffin a few minutes f later aa and sent away these are a fair sample of instances and scenes familiar at every turn in this stricken city the loss of life is simply dreadful the most conservative people declare that the number will reach but it is about certain that the list list of the lost will never be made complete the he hc brors of the situation were intensified by the robbing of the dead which was extensively carried on human vultures approached pro ached corpses rifled the pockets of dead men taking money watches etc and stealing finger rings earrings and other valuables from the bodies of women it would seem that some sense of awe inspired by the appalling visitation would restrain even thieves but instead of this being the case scores of scoundrels flocked from neighboring cities apparently for the purpose ur 0 of preying rey ng upon the corpses they hey might run u across on tahe e afternoon of june 2 at johnstown hunger was added as a leading element of the horror of the situation famishing crowds surrounded the freight cars that were being fitted to feed the hungry and shouted for bread at first those in charge tossed the provisions into the crowd and an awful scramble followed children were trampled under feet and women were unable to get food fuos though they needed it coree come finally thy the alleghany allegheny Alleg hany and pittsburg police stopped the throwing of the he food and forced the crowd to pass in single file before receiving it then there was no more trouble though little children were crying for bread wheres whereas that child without stockings called out a committee man from a care filled with clothing there were a dozen shivering little girls girla in sight and as many poorly clothed to protect them from the weather it was very cold and many women and children were suffering coffins by the car load were shipped from pittsburg and other points to where large numbers of corpses were atone at one time 2200 coffins left for johnstown the latter place was on june 3 described as seeming like a great tomb the people had supped cupped so full of horrors that they went about in a sort of a laze daze and only half conscious of their at every hour as one went through the streets he could hear neighbors greeting each other and injuring without it a show of feeling how many each had lost in his family A correspondent heard a gray haired man hail another across the street with this question 1 I lost five all are gone but mary and 1 I 11 was the reply 1 I am ain worse off than that said the first farst old man 1 I have only my grandson left seven of us are gone and so they passed on without apparent excitement they and everyone else had bad heard so much of these melancholy conversations that somehow the calamity had lost its significance to them they treated it exactly as if the dead persons had bad gone away and were coming back in a week men from the surrounding country districts flocked to johnstown to see the effects of the calamity many of these indulged in drinking apparently for the purpose purpose of bracing up their nerves until there were so 60 many drunken men in the town that the police had to compel all visitors to leave who could not give a satisfactory reason for their presence the scenes of drunkenness which occurred however and which were witnessed on the chuu country roads after this action of the police constituted another horrible feature of the situation As is apparent from the nature and extent W ja calamity there is great diffie dW in approximating the loss of life upon this point a dispatch dated june 3 says developments every hour make it more apparent that the exact number of lives lost in the john johnstown horror will never be known and the estimates will doubtless be found to have been too small over 1000 bodies have been found since sunrise toda yand the most skeptical optical ek concede the remains of thousands more beneath the debris above johnstown bridge the population of johnstown surrounding towns and the portion of the valley affected by the flood is or was from to associated press representatives today interviewed a number of leading citizens of johnstown who survived the flood and their opinion was that fully 80 30 per cent of the residents of johnstown and cambria had been victims of the continued disaster of fire and water if this be true the total loss lose of live in the entire valley cannot be less leas than or and possibly much greater of the thousands who were devoured by flames and whose ashes rest beneath smoking debris about johnstown bridge no information can be obtained as little will ever be learned |