The first train that passed New Florence, bound east, was crowded with
people from Pittsburgh and places along the line, who were going to the
scene of the disaster with but little hope of finding their loved ones
alive. It was a heart-rending sight. Not a dry eye was in the train.
Mothers moaned for their children. Husbands paced the aisles and wrung
their hands in mute agony. Fathers pressed their faces against the
windows and endeavored to see something, they knew not what, that would
tell them in a measure of the dreadful fate that their loved ones had
met with. All along the raging Conemaugh the train stopped, and bodies
were taken on the express car, being carried by the villagers who were
out along the banks. Oh, the horror and infinite pity of it all! What a
journey has been that of the last half hour! Swollen corpses lay here
and there in piles of cross-ties, or on the river banks along the
tangled greenery.
It was about nine o'clock when the first passenger train since Friday
came to the New Florence depot with its load of eager passengers. They
were no idle travelers, but each had a mission. Here and there men were
staring out the windows with red eyes. Among them were tough-looking
Hungarians and Italians who had lost friends near Nineveh, while many
were weeping, on all sides. Two of the passengers on the train were man
and wife from Johnstown. He was dignified and more or less
self-possessed. She was anxious, and tried hard to control her feelings.
From every newcomer and possible source of information she sought news.
"Ours is a big, new brick house," said she with a brave effort, but with
her brown eyes moist and red lips trembling. "It is a three-story house,
and I don't think there is any trouble, do you?" said she to me, and
without waiting for my answer, she continued with a sob, "There are my
four children in the house and their nurse, and I guess father and
mother will go over to the house, don't you?"
In a few moments all those in the car knew the story of the pair, and
many a pitying glance was cast at them. Their house was one of the first
to go.
The huge wave struck Bolivar just after dark, and in five minutes the
Conemaugh rose from six to forty feet, and the waters spread out over
the whole country. Soon houses began floating down, and clinging to the
débris were men, women, and children shrieking for aid. A large number
of citizens gathered at the county bridge, and they were reinforced by a
number from Garfield, a town on the opposite side of the river. They
brought ropes, and these were thrown over into the boiling waters as
persons drifted by, in efforts to save them. For half an hour all
efforts were fruitless, until at last, when the rescuers were about
giving up all hope, a little boy astride a shingle roof managed to catch
hold of one of the ropes. He caught it under his left arm and was thrown
violently against an abutment, but managed to keep hold and was pulled
onto the bridge amid the cheers of the onlookers. The lad was at once
taken to Garfield and cared for. The boy is about sixteen years old and
his name is Hessler. His story of the calamity is as follows:--
"With my father I was spending the day at my grandfather's house in
Cambria City. In the house at the time were Theodore, Edward, and John
Kintz, John Kintz, Jr., Miss Mary Kintz, Mrs. Mary Kintz, wife of John
Kintz, Jr.; Miss Treacy Kintz, Mrs. Rica Smith, John Hirsch and four
children, my father, and myself. Shortly after five o'clock there was a
noise of roaring waters and screams of people. We looked out the door
and saw persons running. My father told us to never mind, as the waters
would not rise further. But soon we saw houses swept by, and then we ran
up to the floor above. The house was three stories, and we were at last
forced to the top one. In my fright I jumped on the bed. It was an
old-fashioned one, with heavy posts. The water kept rising, and my bed
was soon afloat. Gradually it was lifted up. The air in the room grew
close, and the house was moving. Still the bed kept rising and pressed
the ceiling. At last the posts pushed the plaster. It yielded, and a
section of the roof gave way. Then I suddenly found myself on the roof
and was being carried down stream. After a little this roof commenced to
part, and I was afraid I was going to be drowned, but just then another
house with a shingle roof floated by, and I managed to crawl on it and
floated down until nearly dead with cold, when I was saved. After I was
freed from the house I did not see my father. My grandfather was on a
tree, but he must have been drowned, as the waters were rising fast.
John Kintz, Jr., was also on a tree. Miss Mary Kintz and Mrs. Mary Kintz
I saw drown. Miss Smith was also drowned. John Hirsch was in a tree, but
the four children were drowned. The scenes were terrible. Live bodies
and corpses were floating down with me and away from me. I would see a
person shriek and then disappear. All along the line were people who
were trying to save us, but they could do nothing, and only a few were
caught."
An eye-witness at Bolivar Block station tells a story of heroism which
occurred at the lower bridge which crosses the Conemaugh at that point.
A young man, with two women, were seen coming down the river on part of
a floor. At the upper bridge a rope was thrown down to them. This they
all failed to catch. Between the two bridges he was noticed to point
toward the elder woman, who, it is supposed, was his mother. He was then
seen to instruct the women how to catch the rope which was being lowered
from the other bridge. Down came the raft with a rush. The brave man
stood with his arms around the two women. As they swept under the bridge
he reached up and seized the rope. He was jerked violently away from the
two women, who failed to get a hold on the rope. Seeing that they would
not be rescued, he dropped the rope and fell back on the raft, which
floated on down the river. The current washed their frail craft in
toward the bank. The young man was enabled to seize hold of a branch of
a tree. He aided the two women to get up into the tree. He held on with
his hands and rested his feet on a pile of driftwood. A piece of
floating débris struck the drift, sweeping it away. The man hung with
his body immersed in the water. A pile of drift soon collected, and he
was enabled to get another insecure footing. Up the river there was a
sudden crash, and a section of the bridge was swept away and floated
down the stream, striking the tree and washing it away. All three were
thrown into the water and were drowned before the eyes of the horrified
spectators, just opposite the town of Bolivar.
At Bolivar a man, woman, and child were seen floating down in a lot of
drift. The mass soon began to part, and, by desperate efforts, the
husband and father succeeded in getting his wife and little one on a
floating tree. Just then the tree was washed under the bridge, and a
rope was thrown out. It fell upon the man's shoulders. He saw at a
glance that he could not save his dear ones, so he threw the means of
safety on one side and clasped in his arms those who were with him. A
moment later and the tree struck a floating house. It turned over, and
in an instant the three persons were in the seething waters, being
carried to their death.
An instance of a mother's love at Bolivar is told. A woman and two
children were floating down the torrent. The mother caught a rope, and
tried to hold it to her and her babe. It was impossible, and with a look
of anguish she relinquished the rope and sank with her little ones.
A family, consisting of father and mother and nine children, were washed
away in a creek at Lockport. The mother managed to reach the shore, but
the husband and children were carried out into the Conemaugh to drown.
The woman was crazed over the terrible event.
A little girl passed under the Bolivar bridge just before dark. She was
kneeling on part of a floor, and had her hands clasped as if in prayer.
Every effort was made to save her, but they all proved futile. A
railroader who was standing by remarked that the piteous appearance of
the little waif brought tears to his eyes. All night long the crowd
stood about the ruins of the bridge which had been swept away at
Bolivar. The water rushed past with a roar, carrying with it parts of
houses, furniture, and trees. No more living persons are being carried
past. Watchers, with lanterns, remained along the banks until daybreak,
when the first view of the awful devastation of the flood was witnessed.
Along the bank lay the remnants of what had once been dwelling-houses
and stores; here and there was an uprooted tree. Piles of drift lay
about, in some of which bodies of the victims of the flood will be
found.
Harry Fisher, a young telegraph operator, who was at Bolivar when the
first rush of waters began, says: "We knew nothing of the disaster
until we noticed the river slowly rising, and then more rapidly. News
reached us from Johnstown that the dam at South Fork had burst. Within
three hours the water in the river rose at least twenty feet. Shortly
before six o'clock ruins of houses, beds, household utensils, barrels,
and kegs came floating past the bridges. At eight o'clock the water was
within six feet of the roadbed of the bridge. The wreckage floated past,
without stopping, for at least two hours. Then it began to lessen, and
night coming suddenly upon us, we could see no more. The wreckage was
floating by for a long time before the first living persons passed.
Fifteen people that I saw were carried down by the river. One of these,
a boy, was saved, and three of them were drowned just directly below the
town. Hundreds of animals lost their lives. The bodies of horses, dogs,
and chickens floated past in numbers that could not be counted."
Just before reaching Sang Hollow, the end of the mail line on the
Pennsylvania Railroad, is "S. O." signal tower, and the men in it told
piteous stories of what they saw.
A beautiful girl came down on the roof of a building, which was swung in
near the tower. She screamed to the operators to save her, and one big,
brawny, brave fellow walked as far into the river as he could, and
shouted to her to guide herself into shore with a bit of plank. She was
a plucky girl, full of nerve and energy, and stood upon her frail
support in evident obedience to the command of the operator. She made
two or three bold strokes, and actually stopped the course of the raft
for an instant. Then it swerved, and went out from under her. She tried
to swim ashore, but in a few seconds she was lost in the swirling water.
Something hit her, for she lay on her back, with 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 of water,
drowning, gasping, struggling, and fighting desperately for life. Two
men, on a tiny raft, shot into the swiftest part of the current. They
crouched stolidly, looking at the shores, while between them, dressed in
white, and kneeling with her face turned heavenward, was a girl six or
seven years old. She seemed stricken with paralysis until she came
opposite the tower, and then she turned her face to the operator. She
was so close they could see big tears on her cheeks, and her pallor was
as death. The helpless men on shore shouted to her to keep up her
courage, and she resumed her devout attitude, and disappeared under the
trees of a projecting point a short distance below. "We couldn't see her
come out again," said the operator, "and that was all of it."