Multiplication of Terrors.
The handsome brick High School Building is damaged to such an extent
that it will have to be rebuilt. The water attained the height of the
window sills of the second floor. Its upper stories formed a refuge for
many persons. All Saturday afternoon two little girls could be seen at
the windows frantically calling for aid. They had spent all night and
the day in the building, cut off from all aid. Without food and drinking
water their condition was lamentable. Late in the evening the children
were removed to higher ground and properly cared for.
A number of persons had been taken from this building earlier in the
day, but in the excitement the children were forgotten. Their names
could not be obtained.
Death in Many Forms.
Morrell Institute, a beautiful building and the old homestead of the
Morrell family, is totally ruined. The water has weakened the walls and
foundations to such an extent that there is danger of its collapsing.
Many families took refuge in this building and were saved. Now that the
waters have receded there is danger from falling walls. All day long the
crashing of walls could be heard across the river. Before daybreak this
morning the sounds could not but make one shudder at the very thought
of the horrible deaths that awaited many who had escaped the devastating
flood.
Library Hall was another of the fine buildings of the many in the city
that is destroyed. Of the Episcopal church not a vestige remains. Where
it once stood, there is now a placid lake. The parsonage is swept away,
and the rector of the church, Rev. Mr. Diller, was drowned.
Buried Under Falling Buildings.
The church was one of the first buildings to fall. It carried with it
several of the surrounding houses. Many of them were occupied. The
victims were swept into the comparatively still waters at the bridge,
and there met death either by fire or water.
James M. Walters, an attorney, spent the night in Alma Hall and relates
a thrilling story. One of the most curious occurrences of the whole
disaster was how Mr. Walters got to the hall. He has his office on the
second floor. His home is at No. 135 Walnut street. He says he was in
the house with his family when the waters struck it. All was carried
away. Mr. Walters' family drifted on a roof in another direction. He
passed down several streets and alleys until he came to the hall. His
dwelling struck that edifice and he was thrown into his own office.
Long, Dark Night of Terror.
About two hundred persons had taken refuge in the hall, and were on the
second, third and fourth stories. The men held a meeting and drew up
some rules, which all were bound to respect. Mr. Walters was chosen
president. Rev. Mr. Beale was put in charge of the first floor, A.M.
Hart of the second floor, Doctor Matthews of the fourth floor. No lights
were allowed, and the whole night was spent in darkness. The sick were
cared for. The weaker women and children had the best accommodations
that could be had, while the others had to wait. The scenes were most
agonizing. Heartrending shrieks, sobs and moans pierced the gloomy
darkness. The crying of children mingled with the suppressed sobs of the
women. Under the guardianship of the men all took more hope. No one
slept during all the long dark night. Many knelt for hours in prayer,
their supplications mingling with the roar of the waters and the shrieks
of the dying in the surrounding houses. In all this misery two women
gave premature birth to children.
Here is a Hero.
Dr. Matthews is a hero. Several of his ribs were crushed by a falling
timber and his pains were most severe, yet through all he attended the
sick. When two women in a house across the street shouted for help he
with two other brave young men climbed across the drift and ministered
to their wants. No one died during the night, but women and children
surrendered their lives on the succeeding day as a result of terror and
fatigue. Miss Rose Young, one of the young ladies in the hall, was
frightfully cut and bruised. Mrs. Young had a leg broken. All of Mr.
Walters' family were saved.
While the loss of property about Brookville, the lumber centre of
Pennsylvania, by the great flood has been enormous, variously estimated
at from $250,000 to $500,000, not a single life has been lost. At least
there have been none reported so far, and I have travelled over the line
from Red Bank, on the Valley road, to Dubois, on the low grade division.
Every creek is swollen to many times its natural size. A great deal of
the low-lying farm lands and roads in places have water enough over them
to float an ordinary steamboat.
Leaving Pittsburgh Saturday morning on the valley road, we ran past
millions and millions of feet of lumber. From the city to the junction
opposite Freeport the river was almost choked with debris of broken and
shattered houses. In places the river was fairly black with floating
masses of lath, shingles, roofs, floors and other lumber that had
formerly been houses. The sight was appalling and spoke louder than any
pen can describe.
At Red Bank the river was filled with a different kind of lumber,
including huge saw logs ready for cutting. From the estimates of an old
lumber man who was on the train I was told that between the stations
named we passed at least ten million feet of lumber, which means a loss
of fully $100,000 to the owners. A big portion of this came out of the
Clarion river, the estimated money loss from that section alone being
anywhere from $500,000 to $750,000.
All along the Allegheny river were gathered people trying to catch the
logs, risking their lives, for the logs swept down the river in a
current that was running fully ten miles an hour. The work was very
hazardous. The catchers are allowed by law six and a quarter cents for
each log captured, and the river was almost lined with people trying to
save the property.
At Red Bank, which we left at noon, there were at least six feet of
water expected from Oil City, and with it, according to the reports from
up the river, was an immense amount of lumber. Leaving the valley road
at Red Bank we went up the low grade division to Bryant, where immense
sawmills, the largest in the vicinity are located. The current was
rushing along at a rate anywhere from twelve to fifteen miles an hour,
tossing the huge logs around like so many toothpicks and carrying
everything before them. So great was the current and mass of logs that
the big iron bridge at Reynoldsville, sixteen miles above Brookville,
was swept away, as were two wagon bridges and several small foot
bridges.
Hundreds Homeless and Suffering.
Many houses here and there along Red Bank Creek were turned upside down,
some of them floating clear away, while the more secure ones were
flooded with water clear into the second floors. Many of the smaller
cottages and shanties were covered, leaving only the peaks of the roofs
sticking out to show the spots that families had but a few hours before
called home. All along the railroad track was piled the few household
effects, furniture, bedding, tables and clothes which the poor owners
had saved before they were forced out on the high ground. These same
people had gone to bed last evening thinking themselves safe from the
high water, only to be wakened about midnight by the noise of the
rushing floods and the huge saw logs bumping against their homes. The
very narrow escapes that some of them made while getting their families
into places of safety would fill many pages of this book.
Floating to Safety on Saw Logs.
One man had to mount the different members of his family on logs. The
mother and children alike sat astride of them, and then, with the father
on the other end, were poled across to the high ground.
Another man, whose house was in a worse place, swam ashore and, throwing
a rope back to the mother, who was surrounded on the porch of the house
by the children, yelled for her to tie one end to the little ones so he
could pull them over the fast running water. This operation was
continued until the entire family was rescued.
Willing workers from the neighborhood were not long in getting huge
bonfires started, and with the aid of these and dry clothing brought in
haste by people whose homes stood on higher ground the family were soon
warmed.
The same willing hands hastily constructed sheds, and with immense
bonfires the people were kept warm till daylight. Others, more
fortunate, were able to save enough from their houses to make
themselves comfortable for a short season of camping. One poor family I
noticed had saved enough carpet to make a tent out of, and under this
temporary shelter the mother was doing her best to prepare a meal and
attend to her other household duties.
Sheltered by Friendly Neighbors.
In Brookville a great many houses were submerged, but no lives were
lost. While the people were driven from their homes, they were more
fortunate than the people of Bryants, because they could at once find
shelter under the roofs of the neighbors' houses.
All of the saw mills, the chief industry of the town, were closed down.
Some because the water was over the first floor, and others because
their entire working force were on the creek trying to construct
temporary booms, by which they expected to save at least a portion of
the property from being swept away. One man rigged a boom with the aid
of a cable 1,600 feet long and thick enough to hold the heaviest
steamer. About fifty logs were chained together for further protection.
This arrangement for a time checked the mass of logs, but just when
everybody was thinking it would stop the output a small dam gave way,
bringing down with it another half million feet of lumber. When this
struck the temporary boom it parted, as if the huge cable was a piece of
thread, and the logs shot past.
Just at Bryants, however, a gorge formed shortly after two o'clock
Friday afternoon, and within a remarkably short time there was a pile of
logs wedged in that stretched back fully a quarter of a mile and the
top of which was more than ten feet high. This of course changed the
course of the stream a little, but the natural gorge had saved enough
logs to amount to more than $100,000 in money.
The following comments by one of our journals sum up the situation after
receiving the dreadful news of the three preceding days:
The Great Calamity.
The appalling catastrophy which has spread such awful havoc through the
teeming valley of the Conemaugh almost surpasses belief and fairly
staggers imagination. Without yet measuring its dire extent, enough is
known to rank it as the greatest calamity of the natural elements which
this country has ever witnessed. Nothing in our history short of the
deadly blight of battle has approached this frightful cataclysm, and no
battle, though destroying more life, has ever left such a ghastly trail
of horror and devastation. It seems more like one of those terrible
convulsions of nature from which we have hitherto been happily spared,
but which at rare intervals have swallowed up whole communities in
remote South American or oriental lands.
Ingenious and masterful as the human intellect is in guiding and
controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and
insignificant it appears in the presence of such a transcendent
disaster! It is well nigh inconceivable that a great section throbbing
with populous towns, and resonant with the hum of industry, should be
wiped out in the twinkling of an eye by a mighty, raging torrent, more
consuming than fire and more violent than the earthquake. The suddenness
of the blow and the impossibility of communicating with the scene add to
the terror of the event. The sickening spectacle of ruin and death which
will be revealed when the veil of darkness is lifted is left to
conjecture. The imagination can scarcely picture the dread realities,
and it would be difficult to overdraw the awful features of a calamity
which has every element of horror.
The River and Lake.
Nature is so framed at the fated point for such a disaster that man was
called upon for unceasing vigilance. The Conemaugh makes its channel
through a narrow valley between high ranges. Numerous streams drain the
surrounding mountains into its current. Along its course swarm frequent
hamlets busy with the wealth dug from the seams of the earth. The chief
of these towns, the seat of an immense industry, lies in a little basin
where the gap broadens to take in a converging stream and then
immediately narrows again, no outlet save the constricted waterway. High
above stands a great lake which is held in check only by an artificial
barrier, and which, if once unchained, must pour its resistless torrent
through this narrow gorge like a besom of destruction overwhelming
everything before it. There were all the elements of an unparalleled
disaster. Years of immunity had given a feeling of security for all time
without some extraordinary and unexpected occasion. But the occasion
appeared when in unforseen force the rains descended and the floods
came, and to-day desolation reigns.
A Direful Calamity.
It is impossible yet to measure the extent of the calamity. But the
destruction of life and property must be something that it is appalling
to think of, and the sorrow and suffering to follow are incalculable. A
solemn obligation devolves upon the people of the whole country. We can
not remedy the past but we can alleviate the present and the future.
Thousands of families are homeless and destitute; thousands are without
means of support; perchance, thousands are bereft of the strong arms
upon which they have relied. There is an instant, earnest demand for
help. Let there be immediate, energetic, generous action. Let us do our
part to relieve the anguish and mitigate the suffering of a community
upon whom has fallen the most terrible visitation in all our history.
An Historic Catastrophe.
When an American Charles Reade wishes in the future to weave into the
woof of his novel the account of some great public calamity he will
portray the misfortune which overwhelmed the towns and villages lying in
the valley of the Conemaugh River. The bursting of a reservoir, and the
ensuing scenes of death and destruction, which are so vividly described
in "Put Yourself in His Place," were not the creatures of Mr. Reade's
imagination, but actual occurrences. The novelist obtained facts and
incidents for one of the most striking chapters in all of his works
from the events which followed the breaking of the Dale Dyke embankment
at Sheffield, England, in March, 1864, when 238 lives were lost and
property valued at millions was destroyed.
It will need even more vivid and vigorous descriptive powers than Mr.
Reade possessed to adequately delineate the scene of destruction and
death now presented in Johnstown and the adjacent villages. The
Sheffield calamity, disastrous as it proved to be, was a small affair
when compared with this latest reservoir accident. The Mill River
reservoir disaster of May, 1874, with its 200 lives lost and $1,500,000
of property destroyed, almost sinks into insignificance beside it. The
only recorded calamity of the kind which anywhere approaches it occurred
in Estrecho de Rientes, in Spain, in April, 1802, when a dam burst and
drowned 600 persons and swept $7,000,000 worth of property away. But
above all these calamities in sad pre-eminence will stand the Conemaugh
disaster.
But dark as the picture is, it will doubtless be relieved by many acts
of heroism. The world will wait to learn if there was not present at
Conemaugh some Myron Day, whose ride on his bareback steed before the
advancing wall of water that burst from Mill River Dam in 1874, shouting
to the unsuspecting people as he rode: "The reservoir is breaking! The
flood is coming! Fly! Fly for your lives," was the one mitigating
circumstance in that scene of woe and destruction. When the full story
of the Conemaugh calamity is told it will, doubtless, be found that
there were many deeds of heroism performed, many noble sacrifices made
and many an act as brave as any performed on the field of battle.
Already we are told of husbands and mothers who preferred to share a
watery grave with their wives and children sooner than accept safety
alone.
Such a calamity, while it makes the heart sick with its story of death
and suffering, always serves to bring out the better and higher
qualities in men and women, and to illustrate how closely all mankind
are bound together by ties of sympathy and compassion. This fact will be
made evident now by the open-handed liberality which will quickly flow
in to relieve the suffering, and, as far as possible, to repair the loss
caused by this historic calamity.