Five days after the disaster a bird's-eye view was taken of Johnstown
from the top of a precipitous mountain which almost overhangs it. The
first thing that impresses the eye, wrote the observer, is the fact that
the proportion of the town that remains uninjured is much smaller than
it seems to be from lower-down points of view. Besides the part of the
town that is utterly wiped out, there are two great swaths cut through
that portion which from lower down seems almost uninjured. Beginning at
Conemaugh, two miles above the railroad bridge, along the right side of
the valley looking down, there is a strip of an eighth by a quarter of a
mile wide, which constituted the heart of a chain of continuous towns,
and which was thickly built over for the whole distance, upon which now
not a solitary building stands except the gutted walls of the Wood,
Morrell & Co. general store in Johnstown, and of the Gautier wire mill
and Woodvale flour mill at Woodvale. Except for these buildings, the
whole two-mile strip is swept clean, not only of buildings, but of
everything. It is a tract of mud, rocks, and such other miscellaneous
débris as might follow the workings of a huge hydraulic placer mining
system in the gold regions. In Johnstown itself, besides the total
destruction upon this strip, extending at the end to cover the whole
lower end of the city, there is a swath branching off from the main
strip above the general store and running straight to the bluff. It is
three blocks wide and makes a huge "Y," with the gap through which the
flood came for the base and main strip and the swaths for branches.
Between the branches there is a triangular block of buildings that are
still standing, although most of them are damaged. At a point exactly
opposite the corner where the branches of the "Y" meet, and distant from
it by about fifty yards, is one of the freaks of the flood. The
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station, a square, two-story brick building,
with a little cupola at the apex of its slanting roof, is apparently
uninjured, but really one corner is knocked in and the whole interior is
a total wreck. How it stood when everything anywhere near it was swept
away is a mystery. Above the "Y"-shaped tract of ruin there is another
still wider swath, bending around in Stony Creek, save on the left,
where the flood surged when it was checked and thrown back by the
railroad bridge. It swept things clean before it through Johnstown and
made a track of ruin among the light frame houses for nearly two miles
up the gap. The Roman Catholic Church was just at its upper edge. It is
still standing, and from its tower the bell strikes the hours regularly
as before, although everybody now is noticing that it always sounds like
a funeral. Nobody ever noticed it before, but from the upper side it can
be seen that a huge hole has been knocked through the side of the
building. A train of cars could be run through it. Inside the church is
filled with all sorts of rubbish and ruin. A little further on is
another church, which curiously illustrates the manner in which fire and
flood seemed determined to unite in completing the ruin of the city.
Just before the flood came down the valley there was a terrific
explosion in this church, supposed to have been caused by natural gas.
Amid all the terrors of the flood, with the water surging thirty feet
deep all around and through it, the flames blazed through the roof and
tower, and its fire-stained walls arise from the débris of the flood,
which covers its foundations. Its ruins are one of the most conspicuous
and picturesque sights in the city.
[Illustration: RUINS FROM SITE OF THE HURLBURT HOUSE.]
Next to Adams Street, the road most traveled in Johnstown now is the
Pennsylvania Railroad track, or rather bed, across the Stony Creek, and
at a culvert crossing just west of the creek. More people have been
injured here since the calamity than at any other place. The railroad
ties which hold the track across the culvert are big ones, and their
strength has not been weakened by the flood, but between the ties and
between the freight and passenger tracks there is a wide space. The
Pennsylvania trains from Johnstown have to stop, of course, at the
eastern end of the bridge, and the thousands of people whom they daily
bring to Johnstown from Pittsburgh have to get into Johnstown by walking
across the track to the Pennsylvania Railroad depot, and then crossing
the pontoon foot-bridge that has been built across the Stony Creek. All
day long there is a black line of people going back and forth across
this course. Every now and then there is a yell, a plunge, a rush of
people to the culvert, a call for a doctor, and cries of "Help" from
underneath the culvert. Some one, of course, has fallen between the
freight and passenger tracks, or between the ties of the tracks
themselves. In the night it is particularly dangerous traveling to the
Pennsylvania depot this way, and people falling then have little chance
of a rescue. So far at least thirty persons have fallen down the
culvert, and a dozen of them, who have descended entirely to the ground,
have escaped in some marvelous manner with their lives. Several
Pittsburghers have had their legs and arms broken, and one man cracked
his collar-bone. It is to be hoped that these accidents will keep off
the flock of curiosity-seekers, in some degree at least. The presence of
these crowds seriously interferes with the work of clearing up the town,
and affects the residents here in even a graver manner, for though many
of those coming to Johnstown to spend a day and see the ruins bring
something to eat with them, many do not do so, and invade the relief
stands, taking the food which is lavishly dealt out to the suffering.
Though the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge is as strong as ever,
apparently, beyond the bridge, the embankment on which the track is
built is washed away, and people therefore do not cross the bridge, but
leave the track on the western side, and, clambering down the abutments,
cross the creek on a rude foot-bridge hastily erected, and then through
the yard of the Open-Hearth Works and of the railroad up to the depot.
This yard altogether is about three-quarters of a mile long, but so
deceptive are distances in the valley that it does not look one-third
that. The bed of this yard, three-quarters of a mile long, and about the
same distance wide, is the most desolate place here. The yard itself is
fringed with the crumbling ruins of the iron works and of the railroad
shops. The iron works were great, high brick buildings, with steep iron
roofs. The ends of these buildings were smashed in, and the roofs bend
over where the flood struck them, in a curve.
But it is the bed of the yard itself that is desolate. In appearance it
is a mass of stones and rocks and huge boulders, so that it seems a vast
quarry hewn and uncovered by the wind. There is comparatively little
débris here, all this having been washed away over to the sides of the
buildings, in one or two instances filling the buildings completely.
There is no soft earth or mud on the rocks at all, this part of
Johnstown being much in contrast with the great stretch of sand along
the river. In some instances the dirt is washed away to such a depth
that the bed-rock is uncovered.
The fury of the waters here may be gathered from this fact: piled up
outside the works of the Open-Hearth Company were several heaps of
massive blooms--long, solid blocks of pig iron, weighing fifteen tons
each. The blooms, though they were not carried down the river, were
scattered about the yard like so many logs of wood. They will have to be
piled up again by the use of a derrick. The Open-Hearth Iron Works
people are making vigorous efforts to clear their buildings. The yards
of the company were blazing last night with the burning débris, but it
will be weeks before the company can start operations.
In the Pennsylvania Railroad yard all is activity and bustle. At the
relief station, and at the headquarters of General Hastings, in the
signal tower, the man who is the head of all operations there, and the
directing genius of the place, is Lieutenant George Miller, of the Fifth
United States Infantry. Lieutenant Miller was near here on his vacation
when the flood came. He was one of the first on the spot, and was about
the only man in Johnstown who showed some ability as an organizer and a
disciplinarian. A reporter who groped his way across the railroad track,
the foot-bridge, and the quarries and yards at reveille found Lieutenant
Miller in a group of the soldiers of the Fourteenth Pennsylvania
Regiment telling them just what to do.