Comparisons Between the Galveston and Johnstown Disasters--The Latter Not
So Horrible in Its Features--Frightful Plight of the Texas Victims.
Until the elements wreaked their vengeance upon the fair City of Galveston
and vented their wrath upon its unoffending population, the awful disaster
at Johnstown, Pa., which occurred on the 31st of May, 1889, was the most
frightful calamity known in the history of the United States. Johnstown
was almost literally wiped from the face of the earth, the suddenness of
the flood which created the havoc precluding the escape of anyone
unfortunate enough to be in its path.
Unlike the Galveston catastrophe, the flood at Johnstown poured its waters
upon the devoted inhabitants without warning and the slaughter was over
within the space of a comparatively few minutes. The victims, that is to
say, the majority of them, were drowned or dashed to pieces before they
had time to realize the horror of it all.
At Galveston the people knew for hours before the angry waters submerged
the island and the resistless gale tore the business buildings and
residences to pieces what their fate was to be. They looked death squarely
in the face hour after hour, suffering all the terrors dire certainty
could inflict, their knowledge that they were absolutely powerless and
beyond the reach of aid adding to their agonies.
Death was merciful to the people of Johnstown; he was cruel to his prey at
Galveston, and delighted in the tortures he was enabled to impose before
he placed his icy hand upon them and bade them come.
Perhaps the only parallel in history to the Galveston visitation was the
destruction, in 79 A. D., of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The frightened
pleasure-seekers of those doomed cities could see the red lava stream
bearing down upon them as it was vomited up from the bowels of Vesuvius
and thrown out from the mighty maw of the crater, but even then they were
mercifully stifled by the tremendous, never-ending shower of ashes which
soon enveloped them and completely covered their homes.
They did not stand for hours, with the blackness of the night around them,
listening to the roar of the volcano's eruption and hear their death knell
sounded long before they were compelled to undergo the actual pain of an
awful death; they were caught as they sought safety in flight and stricken
down while endeavoring to get beyond the reach of the sickle of the grim
reaper; they could move and act in accordance with their impulses which
prompted them to make a flight for life, and they succumbed only after a
desperate struggle.
It was different at Galveston. The men, women and children were not
permitted even the small but precious boon of falling while battling with
the grim destroyer; they were caught and imprisoned, even as those who
were done to death during the time when the Inquisition reigned, and, on
the way to execution, were, it might be said, compelled to bear the very
cross upon which they were to be impaled.
There is no record since time began of such a long-drawn-out agony as that
which the devoted people of Galveston endured during the period
intervening between the advent of the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and
the final imposition of the death penalty.
Fathers saw their wives and babes crushed by the wreckage flung aloft and
around by the fury of the gale, or drowned in the swift running current;
wives saw their husbands and children torn from them and swept from their
sight forever; children saw their parents disappear in the murky, turbid
waters of the flood.
Men saw the dead faces of their loved ones they would have deemed it a joy
to save as they were borne along upon the bosom of the waters. Men invited
destruction in their efforts at rescue, only to realize how weak and
utterly futile was their strength in comparison to the irresistible power
of the enraged elements. Men died desponding because they could not save
those they had cherished and heretofore protected, and went down in
despair and gloom.
At Johnstown the released waters tore their way through the beautiful
valley of the Conemagh with the rush and speed of a giant avalanche and
enfolded their victims in their merciless embrace; the inhabitants were,
in the twinkling of an eye, borne from the sunshine of life to the gloom
of the valley of the shadow; they may have felt a momentary terror before
they succumbed, but it was all over in an instant.
At Galveston, the condemned simply waited for the inevitable; they clung
to the brief remaining supports and died a thousand deaths before death
claimed them; they stood upon the brink of eternity and cried in vain for
the succor they well knew would not come; they prayed for mercy, but there
was none.
When the waters of the gulf leaped upon the island where the beautiful
city sat in all her glory the people fled to the high places and saw the
flood creep higher and higher until it overcame them. Although it was not
until the darkness of the night had long since settled upon them they had
known in the afternoon that Galveston was doomed. The hurricane would not
permit them to escape, but sundered all communication with the mainland
and then laughed at their puny efforts at preservation.
The death roster in and around Galveston was fully 8,000; at Johnstown the
known number of victims was a score less than 2,300. Many died at
Johnstown of whom nothing was ever heard, and there were possibly 2,500
persons engulfed in the stream which all but destroyed the town, but at
the same time the probabilities are that 10,000 people died at Galveston
and in the immediate vicinity. Bodies were washed up and thrown upon the
shore by hundreds for days after the disaster; how many were burned upon
the many funeral pyres no accurate record was kept.
In one respect the two calamities were alike--the destruction of millions
of dollars' worth of property, but the losses were not so great at
Johnstown during those fearful two minutes as those occasioned by the
beating of the winds and waves which for hours had Galveston at their
mercy.
Johnstown was a city of 30,000, teeming with the industry of a
manufacturing town. With not even a warning shout to apprise the
inhabitants the dam of a lake high above the town broke and the flood
sweeping down the Conemagh Valley engulfed the city and its inhabitants
before they even knew of the danger. The whole place was a mass of debris
and dead when the deluge subsided.
Galveston was a city of nearly 40,000 people, and had within its gates
hundreds of strangers, and the fact that telegrams of inquiry from all
parts of the United States poured into the mayor's office in a perfect
stream for days after the flood indicated that scores were killed of whom
the searchers knew nothing.
But Johnstown was not alone in its misery. In the southwest a tragedy was
enacted a few years later which claimed hundreds of victims.
A tornado, immeasurable in its force and fury, blotted out a section of
St. Louis late in the afternoon of May 22, 1896. Nearly a thousand lives
and tens of millions in property were sacrificed.
Until the disaster at Galveston the St. Louis catastrophe was the second
greatest disaster of its kind in the history of the nation.
The tornado destroyed dozens of the finest buildings in the city. It
leveled massive structures to the ground. It tossed railroad locomotives
about and crushed the eastern span of the Eads bridge, one of the
strongest structures in the world.
It made St. Louis a city of mourning for weeks and impoverished numberless
families.
Yet Galveston surpassed these cities in the frightful nature of its
calamity. Hundreds of insane people are being cared for, their reason
having been overthrown by their great sufferings. This was one of the
saddest features of the shocking visitation. These poor creatures, first
bereft of home, family and property, are now living legacies of the most
stupendous catastrophe this country has ever known.