JOHNSTOWN FLOOD TORRENT

The natural function of a flood plain is to carry away excess water when there is a flood. Piled up against the arches, much of the debris caught fire, entrapping forever eighty people who had survived the initial flood wave.įloods are familiar events in most parts of the world and they most frequently occur when humans compete for the use of flood plains. As darkness fell, thousands were huddled in attics, others were floating on the debris, and many more had been swept downstream to the old Stone Bridge at the junction of the rivers.

It was all over in ten minutes, but for some the worst was still yet to come. He lost his life as he crossed a railway bridge below Johnstown and was caught in a wall of water and debris as the bridge collapsed. Some paid attention to his cry, most ignored him. There were no telephones or anything similar beyond the telegraph stations at different locations to warn the people of Johnstown of the approaching deluge.Ī young civil engineer who was the first to see the impending break in the South Fork Dam rode his horse as fast as he could down the valley shouting, “The dam is breaking, run for your lives.” At South Fork Station he stopped to send a telegraph message to Johnstown, ten miles down the valley. Many became helplessly entangled in miles of barbed wire.

JOHNSTOWN FLOOD TORRENT

Those caught by it were swept up in a torrent of oily, muddy water, surrounded by tons of grinding debris, which crushed some while providing rafts for others. Thousands of people desperately tried to escape the wave.

Boiling with huge chunks of debris, the wall of floodwater grew at times to sixty feet high, tearing downhill at 40 mph, leveling everything in its path. After a night of heavy rain, the South Fork Dam had finally broken, sending sixteen million tons of water crashing down the narrow valley. on the wet afternoon of May 31, 1889, the inhabitants heard a low rumble that grew to a roar like thunder. Every spring, as heavier rain arrived, there was talk that it might not hold back the water, especially if its level rose very high.Īt 4:00 P.M. Fourteen miles up the Conemaugh River, Lake Conemaugh, at an elevation of four hundred feet above Johnstown, with a poorly maintained dam, was a constant source of concern to the people farther down the valley. Because the growing city had narrowed the river to gain building space, heavy rainfall quickly raised the river’s water level, frequently flooding parts of the town. There was one drawback to living in the city-Johnstown had been built on a flood plain at the fork of the Conemaugh and Stony Creek rivers. Founded in 1794, Johnstown prospered with the building of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal in 1834 and still more with the arrival of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the chartering of the Cambria Iron Company in the 1850s. Johnstown was a steel-company town in 1899, a growing and industrious community known for the quality of its steel. The waters of the entire threesquare- mile lake thundered down the valley to Johnstown. Leaks began to appear in several places and within a short time the whole dam collapsed. On May 31, 1889, heavy rains raised the lake level to the top of the dam. This club failed to give attention to the old sluiceways at the bottom of the dam so that, as heavy rain raised the water level in the lake, the only escape route for water was over the top and the dam had never been designed to restrain the weight of water at that level. A small lake, about four hundred feet higher than the elevation of Johnstown, once used to supply the old Pennsylvania canals, had been purchased by a private group, The Hunting and Fishing Club, and they had enlarged it, raising its dam to a height of one hundred feet. Over 2,200 died and many others were homeless. On May 31, 1889, the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, population 30,000, was devastated by the worst flood in the nation’s history.

Poor maintenance had allowed a dam built high above Johnstown to give way and flood the town. The town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was devastated by the nation’s worst flood.

Johnstown flood