250,000,000 FEET OF LOGS AFLOAT IN THE SUSQUEHANNA.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Upon a pretty little plateau two hundred feet above the waters of Stony Creek, and directly in front of a slender foot-bridge which leads into Kernsville, stands a group of tents which represents the first effort of any national organization to give material sanitary aid to the unhappy survivors of Johnstown.
It is the camp of the American National Association of the Red Cross, and is under the direction of that noble woman, Miss Clara Barton of Washington, the President of the organization in this country. The camp is not more than a quarter of a mile from the scene of operations in this place, and, should pestilence attend upon the horrors of the flood, this assembly of trained nurses and veteran physicians will be known all over the land. That an epidemic of some sort will come, there seems to be no question. The only thing which can avert it is a succession of cool days, a possibility which is very remote.
Miss Barton, as soon as she heard of the catastrophe, started preparations for opening headquarters in this place. By Saturday morning she had secured a staff, tents, supplies, and all the necessary appurtenances of her work, and at once started on the Baltimore and Ohio Road. She arrived here on Tuesday morning, and pitched her tents near Stony Creek. This was, however, a temporary choice, for soon she removed her camp to the plateau upon which it will remain until all need for Miss Barton will have passed. With her came Dr. John B. Hubbell, field agent; Miss M. L. White, stenographer; Gustave Angerstein, messenger, and a corps of fifteen physicians and four trained female nurses, under the direction of Dr. O’Neill, of Philadelphia.
Upon their arrival they at once established quartermaster and kitchen departments, and in less than three hours these divisions were fully equipped for work. Then when the camp was formally opened on the plateau there were one large hospital tent, capable of accommodating forty persons, four smaller tents to give aid to twenty persons each, and four still smaller ones which will hold ten patients each. Then Miss Barton organized a house-to-house canvass by her corps of doctors, and began to show results almost immediately.
The first part of the district visited was Kernsville. There great want and much suffering were discovered and promptly relieved. Miss Barton says that in most of the houses which were visited were several persons suffering from nervous prostration in the most aggravated form, many cases of temporary insanity being discovered, which, if neglected, would assume chronic conditions. There were a large number of persons, too, who were bruised by their battling on the borders of the flood, and were either ignorant or too broken-spirited to endeavor to aid themselves in any particular. The majority of these were not sufficiently seriously hurt to require removal from their homes to the camp, and so were given medicines and practical, intelligent advice how to use them.
There were fifteen persons, however, who were removed from Kernsville and from a district known as the Brewery, on the extreme east of Johnstown. Three of the number were women and were sadly bruised. One man, Caspar Walthaman, a German operative at the Cambria Iron Works, was the most interesting of all. He lived in a little frame house within fifty yards of the brewery. When the flood came his house was lifted from its foundations and was tossed about like a feather in a gale, until it reached a spot about on a line with Washington Street. There the man’s life was saved by a great drift, which completely surrounded the house, and which forced the structure against the Prospect Hill shore, where the shock wrecked it. Walthaman was sent flying through the air, and landed on his right side on the water-soaked turf. Fortunately the turf was soft and springy with the moisture, and Walthaman had enough consciousness left to crawl up the hillside, and then sank into unconsciousness.
At ten o’clock Saturday morning some friends found him. He was taken to their home in Kernsville. He was scarcely conscious when found, and before he had been in a place of safety an hour he had lost his mind, the reaction was so great. His hair had turned quite white, and the places where before the disaster his hair had been most abundant, on the sides of his head, were completely denuded of it. His scalp was as smooth as an apple-cheek. The physicians who removed him to the Red Cross Hospital declared the case as the most extraordinary one resulting from fright that had ever come under their observation. Miss Barton declares her belief that not one of the persons who are now under treatment is seriously injured, and is confident they will recover in a few days.
Her staff was reinforced by Mrs. and Dr. Gardner, of Bedford, who, during the last great Western floods, rendered most excellent assistance to the sufferers. Both are members of the Relief Association. The squad of physicians and nurses was further added to by more from Philadelphia, and then Miss Barton thought she was prepared to cope with anything in the way of sickness which might arise.
The appearance of the tents and the surroundings are exceedingly inviting. Everything is exquisitely neat, the boards of the tent-floors being almost as white as the snowy linen of the cots. This contrast to the horrible filth of the town, with its fearful stenches and its dead-paved streets, is so invigorating that it has become a place of refuge to all who are compelled to remain here.
The hospital is an old rink on the Bedford pike, which has been transformed into an inviting retreat. Upon entering the door the visitor finds himself in a small ante-room, to one side of which is attached the general consulting-room. On the other side, opposite the hall, is the apothecary’s department, where the prescriptions are filled as carefully as they would be at a first-class druggist’s. In the rear of the medical department and of the general consultation-room are the wards. There are two of them—one for males and the other for females. A long, high, heavy curtain divides the wards, and insures as much privacy as the most modest person would wish. Around the walls in both wards are ranged the regulation hospital beds, with plenty of clean and comfortable bed-clothes.
Patients in the hospital said they couldn’t be better treated if they were paying the physician for their attendance. The trained nurses of the Red Cross Society carefully look after the wants of the sick and injured, and see that they get everything they wish. People who have an abhorrence of going into these hospitals need have no fear that they will not be well treated.
The orphans of the flood—sadly few there are of them, for it was the children that usually went down first, not the parents—are looked after by the Pennsylvania Children’s Aid Society, which has transferred its headquarters for the time being from Philadelphia to this city. There was a thriving branch of this society here before the flood, but of all its officers and executive force two only are alive. Fearing such might be the situation, the general officers of the society sent out on the first available train Miss H. E. Hancock, one of the directors, and Miss H. W. Hinckley, the Secretary. They arrived on Thursday morning, and within thirty minutes had an office open in a little cottage just above the water-line in the upper part of the city. Business was ready as soon as the office, and there were about fifty children looked after before evening. In most cases these were children with relatives or friends in or near Johnstown, and the society’s work has been to identify them and restore them to their friends.
As soon as the society opened its office all cases in which children were involved were sent at once to them, and their efforts have been of great benefit in systematizing the care of the children who are left homeless. Besides this, there are many orphans who have been living in the families of neighbors since the flood, but for whom permanent homes must be found. One family has cared for one hundred and fifty-seven children saved from the flood, and nearly as many are staying with other families. There will be no difficulty about providing for these little ones. The society already has offers for the taking of as many as are likely to be in need of a home.
The Rev. Morgan Dix, on behalf of the Leake and Watts Orphan Home in New York, has telegraphed an offer to care for seventy-five orphans. Pittsburg is proving itself generous in this as in all other matters relating to the flood, and other places all over the country are telegraphing offers of homes for the homeless. Superintendent Pierson, of the Indianapolis Natural Gas Company, has asked for two; Cleveland wants some; Altoona would like a few; Apollo, Pa., has vacancies the orphans can fill, and scores of other small places are sending in similar offers and requests. A queer thing is that many of the officers are restricted by curious provisions as to the religious belief of the orphans. The Rev. Dr. Griffith, for instance, of Philadelphia, says that the Angora (Pa.) Home would like some orphans, “especially Baptist ones,” and Father Field, of Philadelphia, offers to look after a few Episcopal waifs.
The work of the society here has been greatly assisted by the fact that Miss Maggie Brooks, formerly Secretary of the local society here, but living in Philadelphia at the time of the flood, has come here to assist the general officers. Her acquaintance with the town is invaluable.
Johnstown is generous in its misery. Whatever it has left it gives freely to the strangers who have come here. It is not much, but it shows a good spirit. There are means by which Johnstown people might reap a rich harvest by taking advantage of the necessities of strangers. It is necessary, for instance, to use boats in getting about the place, and men in light skiffs are poling about the streets all day taking passengers from place to place. Their services are free. They not only do not, but will not accept any fee. J. D. Haws & Son own large brick-kilns near the bridge. The newspaper men have possession of one of the firm’s buildings and one of the firm spends most of his time in running about trying to make the men comfortable. A room in one of the firm’s barns filled with straw has been set apart solely for the newspaper men, who sleep there wrapped in blankets as comfortably as in beds. There is no charge for this, although those who have tried one night on the floors, sand-piles, and other usual dormitories of the place, would willingly pay high for the use of the straw. Food for the newspaper and telegraph workers has been hard to get except in crude form. Canned corned beef, eaten with a stick for a fork, and dry crackers were the staples up to Tuesday, when a house up the hill was discovered where anybody who came was welcome to the best the house afforded. There was no sugar for the coffee, no vinegar for the lettuce, and the apple butter ran out before the siege was raised, but the defect was in the circumstances of Johnstown, and not in the will of the family.
“How much?” was asked at the end of the meal.
They were poor people. The man probably earns a dollar a day.
“Oh!” replied the woman, who was herself cook, waiter, and lady of the house, “we don’t charge anything in times like these. You see, I went out and spent ten dollars for groceries at a place that wasn’t washed away right after the flood, and we’ve been living on that ever since. Of course we don’t ask any of the relief, not being washed out. You men are welcome to all I can give.”
She had seen the last of her ten dollars worth of provisions gobbled up without a murmur, and yet didn’t “charge anything in times like these.” Her scruples did not, however, extend so far as to refusing tenders of coin, inasmuch as without it her larder would stay empty. She filled it up last night, and the news of the place having spread, she has been getting a continual meal from five in the morning until late at night. Although she makes no charge, her income would make a regular restaurant keeper dizzy.
So far as the Signal Service is concerned, the amount of rainfall in the region drained by the Conemaugh River cannot be ascertained. Mrs. H. M. Ogle, who had been the Signal Service representative in Johnstown for several years and also manager of the Western Union office there, telegraphed at eight o’clock Friday morning to Pittsburg that the river marked fourteen feet, rising; a rise of thirteen feet in twenty-four hours. At eleven o’clock she wired: “River twenty feet and rising, higher than ever before; water in first floor. Have moved to second. River gauges carried away. Rainfall, two and three-tenth inches.” At twenty-seven minutes to one P. M. Mrs. Ogle wired: “At this hour north wind; very cloudy; water still rising.”
Nothing more was heard from her by the bureau, but at the Western Union office at Pittsburg later in the afternoon she commenced to tell an operator that the dam had broken, that a flood was coming, and before she had finished the conversation a singular click of the instrument announced the breaking of the current. A moment afterward the current of her life was broken forever.
Sergeant Stewart, in charge of the Pittsburg bureau, says that the fall of water on the Conemaugh shed at Johnstown up to the time of the flood was probably two and five-tenth inches. He believes it was much heavier in the mountains. The country drained by the little Conemaugh and Stony Creek covers an area of about one hundred square miles. The bureau, figuring on this basis and two and five-tenth inches of rainfall, finds that four hundred and sixty-four million six hundred and forty thousand cubic feet of water was precipitated toward Johnstown in its last hours. This is independent of the great volume of water in the lake, which was not less than two hundred and fifty million cubic feet.
It is therefore easily seen that there was ample water to cover the Conemaugh Valley to the depth of from ten to twenty-five feet. Such a volume of water was never known to fall in that country in the same time.
Colonel T. P. Roberts, a leading engineer, estimates that the lake drained twenty-five square miles, and gives some interesting data on the probable amount of water it contained. He says: “The dam, as I understand, was from hill to hill, about one thousand feet long and about eighty-five feet high at the highest point. The pond covered above seven hundred acres, at least for the present I will assume that to be the case. We are told also that there was a waste-weir at one end seventy-five feet wide and ten feet below the comb or top of the dam. Now we are told that with this weir open and discharging freely to the utmost of its capacity, nevertheless the pond or lake rose ten inches per hour until finally it overflowed the top, and, as I understand, the dam broke by being eaten away at the top.
“Thus we have the elements for very simple calculation as to the amount of water precipitated by the flood, provided these premises are accurate. To raise seven hundred acres of water to a height of ten feet would require about three hundred million cubic feet of water, and while this was rising the waste-weir would discharge an enormous volume—it would be difficult to say just how much without a full knowledge of the shape of its side-walls, approaches, and outlets—but if the rise required ten hours the waste-weir might have discharged perhaps ninety million cubic feet. We would then have a total of flood water of three hundred and ninety million cubic feet. This would indicate a rainfall of about eight inches over the twenty-five square miles. As that much does not appear to have fallen at the hotel and dam it is more than likely that even more than eight inches was precipitated in places farther up. These figures I hold tentatively, but I am much inclined to believe that there was a cloud burst.”
Of course, the Johnstown disaster, great as it was, was by no means the greatest flood in history, since Noah’s Deluge. The greatest of modern floods was that which resulted from the overflow of the great Hoang-Ho, or Yellow River, in 1887. This river, which has earned the title of “China’s Sorrow,” has always been the cause of great anxiety to the Chinese Government and to the inhabitants of the country through which it flows. It is guarded with the utmost care at great expense, and annually vast sums are spent in repairs of its banks. In October, 1887, a number of serious breaches occurred in the river’s banks about three hundred miles from the coast. As a result the river deserted its natural bed and spread over a thickly-populated plain, forcing for itself finally an entire new road to the sea. Four or five times in two thousand years the great river had changed its bed, and each time the change had entailed great loss of life and property.
In 1852 it burst through its banks two hundred and fifty miles from the sea and cut a new bed through the northern part of Shaptung into the Gulf of Pechili. The isolation in which foreigners lived at that time in China prevented their obtaining any information as to the calamitous results of this change, but in 1887 many of the barriers against foreigners had been removed and a general idea of the character of the inundation was easily obtainable.
For several weeks preceding the actual overflow of its banks the Hoang-Ho had been swollen from its tributaries. It had been unusually wet and stormy in northwest China, and all the small streams were full and overflowing. The first break occurred in the province of Honan, of which the capital is Kaifeng, and the city next in importance is Ching or Cheng Chou. The latter is forty miles west of Kaifeng and a short distance above a bend in the Hoang-Ho. At this bend the stream is borne violently against the south shore. For ten days a continuous rain had been soaking the embankments, and a strong wind increased the already great force of the current. Finally a breach was made. At first it extended only for a hundred yards. The guards made frantic efforts to close the gap, and were assisted by the frightened people in the vicinity. But the breach grew rapidly to a width of twelve hundred yards, and through this the river rushed with awful force. Leaping over the plain with incredible velocity, the water merged into a small stream called the Lu-chia. Down the valley of the Lu-chia the torrent poured in an easterly direction, overwhelming everything in its path.
Twenty miles from Cheng Chou it encountered Chungmou, a walled city of the third rank. Its thousands of inhabitants were attending to their usual pursuits. There was no telegraph to warn them, and the first intimation of disaster came with the muddy torrent that rolled down upon them. Within a short time only the tops of the high walls marked where a flourishing city had been. Three hundred villages in the district disappeared utterly, and the lands about three hundred other villages were inundated.
The flood turned south from Chungmou, still keeping to the course of the Lu-chia, and stretched out in width for thirty miles. This vast body of water was from ten to twenty feet deep. Several miles south of Kaifeng the flood struck a large river which there joins the Lu-chia. The result was that the flood rose to a still greater height, and, pouring into a low-lying and very fertile plain which was densely populated, submerged upward of one thousand five hundred villages.
Not far beyond this locality the flood passed into the province of Anhui, where it spread very widely. The actual loss of life could not be computed accurately, but the lowest intelligent estimate placed it at one million five hundred thousand, and one authority fixed it at seven million. Two million people were rendered destitute by the flood, and the suffering that resulted was frightful. Four months later the inundated provinces were still under the muddy waters. The government officials who were on guard when the Hoang-Ho broke its banks were condemned to severe punishment, and were placed in the pillory in spite of their pleadings that they had done their best to avert the disaster.
The inundation which may be classed as the second greatest in modern history occurred in Holland in 1530. There have been many floods in Holland, nearly all due to the failure of the dikes which form the only barrier between it and the sea. In 1530 there was a general failure of the dikes, and the sea poured in upon the low lands. The people were as unprepared as were the victims of the Johnstown disaster. Good authorities place the number of human beings that perished in this flood at about four hundred thousand, and the destruction of property was in proportion.
LAST TRAINS IN AND OUT OF HARRISBURG.
In April, 1421, the River Meuse broke in the dikes at Dort, or Dordrecht, an ancient town in the peninsula of South Holland, situated on an island. Ten thousand persons perished there and more than one hundred thousand in the vicinity. In January, 1861, there was a disastrous flood in Holland, the area sweeping over forty thousand acres, and leaving thirty thousand villages destitute, and again in 1876 severe losses resulted from inundations in this country.
The first flood in Europe of which history gives any authentic account occurred in Lincolnshire, England, A. D. 245, when the sea passed over many thousands of acres. In the year 353 a flood in Cheshire destroyed three thousand human lives and many cattle. Four hundred families were drowned in Glasgow by an overflow of the Clyde in 758. A number of English seaport towns were destroyed by an inundation in 1014. In 1483 a terrible overflow of the Severn, which came at night and lasted for ten days, covered the tops of mountains. Men, women, and children were carried from their beds and drowned. The waters settled on the lands and were called for one hundred years after the Great Waters.
A flood in Catalonia, a province of Spain, occurred in 1617, and fifty thousand persons lost their lives. One of the most curious inundations in history, and one that was looked upon at the time as a miracle, occurred in Yorkshire, England, in 1686. A large rock was split assunder by some hidden force, and water spouted out, the stream reaching as high as a church steeple. In 1771 another flood, known as the Ripon flood, occurred in the same province.
In September, 1687, mountain torrents inundated Navarre, and two thousand persons were drowned. Twice, in 1787 and in 1802, the Irish Liffey overran its banks and caused great damage. A reservoir in Lurca, a city of Spain, burst in 1802, in much the same way as did the dam at Johnstown, and as a result one thousand persons perished. Twenty-four villages near Presburg, and nearly all their inhabitants, were swept away in April, 1811, by an overflow of the Danube. Two years later large provinces in Austria and Poland were flooded, and many lives were lost. In the same year a force of two thousand Turkish soldiers, who were stationed on a small island near Widdin, were surprised by a sudden overflow of the Danube and all were drowned. There were two more floods in this year, one in Silesia, where six thousand persons perished, and the French army met such losses and privations that its ruin was accelerated; and another in Poland, where four thousand persons were supposed to have been drowned. In 1816 the melting of the snow on the mountains surrounding Strabane, Ireland, caused destructive floods, and the overflow of the Vistula in Germany laid many villages under water. Floods that occasioned great suffering occurred in 1829, when severe rains caused the Spey and Findhorn to rise fifty feet above their ordinary level. The following year the Danube again overflowed its banks and inundated the houses of fifty thousand inhabitants of Vienna. The Saone overflowed in 1840, and poured its turbulent waters into the Rhine, causing a flood which covered sixty thousand acres. Lyons was flooded, one hundred houses were swept away at Avignon, two hundred and eighteen at La Guillotiere, and three hundred at Vaise, Marseilles, and Nimes. Another great flood, entailing much suffering, occurred in the south of France in 1856.
A flood in Mill River valley in 1874 was caused by the bursting of a badly constructed dam. The waters poured down upon the villages in the valley much as at Johnstown, but the people received warning in time, and the torrent was not so swift. Several villages were destroyed and one hundred and forty-four persons drowned. The rising of the Garonne in 1875 caused the death of one thousand persons near Toulouse, and twenty thousand persons were made homeless in India by floods in the same year. In 1882 heavy floods destroyed a large amount of property and drowned many persons in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys.
The awful disaster in the Conemaugh Valley calls attention to the fact that there are many similar dams throughout the United States. Though few of these overhang a narrow gorge like the one in which the borough of Johnstown reposed, there is no question that several of the dams now deemed safe would, if broken down by a sudden freshet, sweep down upon peaceful hamlets, cause immense damage to property and loss of life. The lesson taught by the awful scenes at Johnstown should not go unheeded.
Croton Lake Dam was first built with ninety feet of masonry overfall, the rest being earth embankment. On January 7th, 1841, a freshet carried away this earth embankment, and when rebuilt the overfall of the dam was made two hundred and seventy feet long. The foundation is two lines of cribs, filled with dry stone, and ten feet of concrete between. Upon this broken range stone masonry was laid, the down-stream side being curved and faced with granite, the whole being backed with a packing of earth. The dam is forty feet high, its top is one hundred and sixty-six feet above tidewater, and it controls a reservoir area of four hundred acres and five hundred million gallons of water. The Boyd’s Corner Dam holds two million seven hundred and twenty-seven thousand gallons, and was built during the years 1866 and 1872. It stands twenty-three miles from Croton dam, and has cut-stone faces filled between with concrete. The extreme height is seventy-eight feet, and it is six hundred and seventy feet long. Although this dam holds a body of water five times greater than that at Croton Lake, it is claimed by engineers that should it give way the deluge of water which would follow would cause very little loss of life and only destroy farming lands, as below it the country is comparatively level and open. Middle Branch Dam holds four billion four hundred thousand gallons, and was built during 1874 and 1878. It is composed of earth, with a centre of rubble masonry carried down to the rock bottom. It is also considered to be in no danger of causing destruction by sudden breakage, as the downpour of water would spread out over a large area of level land. Besides these there are other Croton water storage basins formed by dams as follows: East Branch, with a capacity of 4,500,000,000 gallons; Lake Mahopac, 575,000,000 gallons; Lake Kirk, 565,000,000 gallons; Lake Gleneida, 165,000,000 gallons; Lake Gilead, 380,000,000 gallons; Lake Waccabec, 200,000,000 gallons; Lake Lonetta, 50,000,000 gallons; Barrett’s ponds, 170,000,000 gallons; China pond, 105,000,000 gallons; White pond, 100,000,000 gallons; Pines pond, 75,000,000 gallons; Long pond, 60,000,000 gallons; Peach pond, 230,000,000 gallons; Cross pond, 110,000,000 gallons, and Haines pond, 125,000,000 gallons, thus completing the storage capacity of the Croton water system of 14,000,000,000 gallons. The engineers claim that none of these last-named could cause loss of life or any great damage to property, because there exist abundant natural outlets.
At Whitehall, N. G., there is a reservoir created by a dam three hundred and twenty feet long across a valley half a mile from the village and two hundred and sixty-six feet above it. A break in this dam would release nearly six million gallons, and probably sweep away the entire town. Norwich, N. Y., is supplied by an earthwork dam, with centre puddle-wall, three hundred and twenty-three feet long and forty feet high. It imprisons thirty million gallons and stands one hundred and eighty feet above the village. At an elevation of two hundred and fifty feet above the town of Olean N. Y., stands an embankment holding in check two million, five hundred thousand gallons. Oneida, N. Y., is supplied by a reservoir formed by a dam across a stream which controls twenty-two million, three hundred and fifty thousand gallons. The dam is nearly three miles from the village and at an altitude of one hundred and ninety feet above it. Such are some of the reservoirs which threaten other communities of our fair land.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
It is now the Thursday after the disaster, and amid the ruins of Johnstown people are beginning to get their wits together. They have quit the aimless wandering about amid the ruins, that marked them for a crushed and despairing people. Everybody is getting to work and forgetting something of the horror of the situation in the necessity of thinking of what they are doing. The deadly silence that has prevailed throughout the town is ended, giving place to the shouts of hundreds of men pulling at ropes, and the crash of timbers and roofs as they pull wrecked buildings down or haul heaps of débris to pieces. Hundreds more are making an almost merry clang with pick and shovel as they clear away mud and gravel, opening ways on the lines of the old streets. Locomotives are puffing about, down into the heart of the town now, and the great whistle at the Cambria Iron Works blew for noon yesterday and to-day for the first time since the flood silenced it. To lighten the sombre aspect of the ruined area, heightened by the cold gray clouds hanging low about the hills, were acres of flame, where debris is being got rid of. Down in what was the heart of the city the soldiers have gone into camp, and little flags snap brightly in the high wind from their acres of white tents.
The relief work seems now to be pretty thoroughly organized, and thousands of men are at work under the direction of the committee. The men are in gangs of about a hundred each, under foremen, with mounted superintendents riding about overseeing the work.
The first effort, aside from that being made upon the gorge at the bridge, is in the upper part of the city and in Stony Creek Gap, where there are many houses with great heaps of debris covering and surrounding them. Three or four hundred men were set at work with ropes, chains, and axes upon each of these heaps, tearing it to pieces as rapidly as possible. Where there are only smashed houses and furniture in the heap the work is easy, but when, as in most instances, there are long logs and tree-trunks reaching in every direction through the mass, the task of getting them out is a slow and difficult one. The lighter parts of the wreck are tossed into heaps in the nearest clear space and set on fire. Horses haul the logs and heavier pieces off to add them to other blazing piles. Everything of any value is carefully laid aside, but there is little of it. Even the strongest furniture is generally in little bits when found, but in one heap this morning were found two mirrors, one about six feet by eight in size, without a crack in it, and with its frame little damaged; the other one, about two feet by three in size, had a little crack at the bottom, but was otherwise all right.
Every once in a while the workmen about these wreck-heaps will stop their shouting and straining at the ropes, gather into a crowd at some one spot in the ruins, and remain idle and quiet for a little while. Presently the group will stir itself a little, fall apart, and out of it will come six men bearing between them on a door or other improvised stretcher a vague form covered with a canvas blanket. The bearers go off along the irregular paths worn into the muddy plain, toward the different morgues, and the men go to work again.
These little groups of six, with the burden between them, are as frequent as ever. One runs across them everywhere about the place. Sometimes they come so thick that they have to form in line at the morgue doors. The activity with which work was prosecuted brought rapidly to light the dark places within the ruins in which remained concealed those bodies that the previous desultory searching had not brought to light. Many of the disclosures might almost better have never seen the light, so heart-rending were they. A mother lay with three children clasped in her arms. So suddenly had the visitation come upon them that the little ones had plainly been snatched up while at play, for one held a doll clutched tightly in its dead hand, and in one hand of another were three marbles. This was right opposite the First National Bank building, in the heart of the city, and near the same spot a family of five—father, mother, and three children—were found dead together. Not far off a roof was lifted up, and dropped again in horror at the sight of nine bodies beneath it. There were more bodies, or fragments of bodies, found, too, in the gorge at the bridge, and from the Cambria Iron Works the ghastly burden-bearers began to come in with the first contributions of that locality to the death list. The passage of time is also bringing to the surface bodies that have been lying beneath the river further down, and from Nineveh bodies are continually being sent up to Morrellville, just below the iron works, for identification.
Wandering about near the ruins of Wood, Morrell & Co.’s store a messenger from Morrellville found a man who looked like the pictures of the Tennessee mountaineers in the Century Magazine, with an addition of woe and misery upon his gaunt, hairy face that no picture could ever indicate. He was tall and thin, and bent, and, from his appearance, abjectly poor. He was telling two strangers how he had lived right across from the store, with his wife and eight children. When the high water came and word was brought that the dam was in danger, he told his wife to get the children together and come with him. The water was deep in the streets, and the passage to the bluff would have been difficult. She laughed at him and told him the dam was all right. He urged her, ordered her, and did everything else but pick her up bodily and carry her out, but she would not come. Finally he set the example and dashed out, himself, through the water, calling to his wife to follow. As his feet began to touch rising ground, he saw the wall of water coming down the valley. He climbed in blind terror up the bank, helped by the rising water, and, reaching solid ground, turned just in time to see the water strike his house.
“When I turned my back,” he said, “I couldn’t look any longer.”
Tears ran down his face as he said this. The messenger coming up just then said:—
“Your wife has been found. They got her down at Nineveh. Her brother has gone to fetch her up.”
The man went away with the messenger.
“He didn’t seem much rejoiced over the good news about his wife,” remarked one of the strangers, who had yet to learn that Johnstown people speak of death and the dead only indirectly whenever possible.
It was the wife’s body, not the wife, that had been found, and that the messenger was to fetch up. The bodies of this man’s eight children have not yet been found. He is the only survivor of a family of ten.
Queer salvage from the flood was a cat that was taken out alive last evening. Its hair was singed off and one eye gone, but it was able to lick the hand of the man who picked it up and carried it off to keep, he said, as a relic of the flood. A white Wyandotte rooster and two hens were also dug out alive, and with dry feathers, from the centre of a heap of wrecked buildings.
The work of clearing up the site of the town has progressed so far that the outlines of some of the old streets could be faintly traced, and citizens were going about hunting up their lots. In many cases it was a difficult task, but enough old landmarks are left to make the determination of boundary lines by a new survey a comparatively easy matter.
The scenes in the morgues are disgusting in the highest degree. The embalmers are at work cutting and slashing with an apathy born of four days and nights of the work, and such as they never experienced before. The boards on which the bodies lie are covered with mud and slime, in many instances.
Men with dynamite, blowing up the drift at the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge, people in the drift watching for bodies, people finding bodies in the ruins and carrying them away on stretchers or sheets, the bonfires of blazing débris all over the town, the soldiers with their bayonets guarding property or taking thieves into custody, the tin-starred policemen with their base ball clubs promenading the streets and around the ruins, the scenes of distress and frenzy at the relief stations, the crash of buildings as their broken remnants fall to the ground—this is the scene that goes on night and day in Johnstown, and will go on for an indefinite time. Still, people have worked so in the midst of such excitement, with the pressure of such an awful horror on their minds that they can get but little rest even when they wish to. Men in this town are too tired to sleep. They lie down with throbbing brains that cannot stop throbbing, so that even the sense of thinking is intense agony.
The undertakers and embalmers claim that they are the busiest men in town, and that they have done more to help the city than any other workmen. The people who attend the morgues for the purpose of identifying their friends and relatives are hardly as numerous as before. Many of them are exhausted with the constant wear and tear, and many have about made up their minds that their friends are lost beyond recovery, and that there is no use looking for them any longer. Others have gone to distant parts of the State, and have abandoned Johnstown and all in it.
A little girl in a poor calico dress climbed upon the fence at the Adams Street morgue and looked wistfully at the row of coffins in the yard. People were only admitted to the morgue in squads of ten each, and the little girl’s turn had not come yet. Her name was Jennie Hoffman. She was twelve years old. She told a reporter that out of her family of fourteen the father and mother and oldest sister were lost. They were all in their home on Somerset Street when the flood came. The father reached out for a tree which went sweeping by, and was pulled out of the window and lost. The mother and children got upon the roof, and then a dash of water carried her and the eldest daughter off. A colored man on an adjoining house took off the little girls who were left—all of them under twelve years of age, except Jennie—and together they clambered over the roofs of the houses near by and escaped.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Day after day the work of reparation goes on. The city has been blotted out. Yet the reeking ruins that mark its site are teeming with life and work more vigorous than ever marked its noisy streets and panting factories. As men and money pour into Johnstown the spirit of the town greatly revives, and the people begin to take a much more favorable view of things. The one thing that is troubling people just now is the lack of ready money. There are drafts here in any quantity, but there is no money to cash them until the money in the vaults of the First National Bank has been recovered. It is known that the vaults are safe and that about $500,000 in cash is there. Of this sum $125,000 belongs to the Cambria Iron Company. It was to pay the five thousand employés of the works. The men are paid off every two weeks, and the last pay-day was to have been on the Saturday after the fatal flood. The money was brought down to Johnstown, on the day before the flood, by the Adams Express Company, and deposited in the bank. After the water subsided, and it was discovered that the money was safe, a guard was placed around the bank and has been maintained ever since.
When the pay-day of the Cambria Iron Company does come it will be an impressive scene. The only thing comparable to it will be the roll-call after a great battle. Mothers, wives, and children will be there to claim the wages of sons, and husbands, and fathers. The men in the gloomy line will have few families to take their wages home to. The Cambria people do not propose to stand on any red-tape rules about paying the wages of their dead employés to the surviving friends and relatives. They will only try to make reasonably sure that they are paying the money to the right persons.
COLUMBIA, PA., UNDER THE FLOOD.
An assistant cashier, Thomas McGee, in the company’s store saved $12,000 of the company’s funds. The money was all in packages of bills in bags in the safe on the ground floor of the main building of the stores. When the water began to rise he went up on the second floor of the building, carrying the money with him. When the crash of the reservoir torrent came Mr. McGee clambered upon the roof, and just before the building tottered and fell he managed to jump on the roof of a house that went by. The house was swept near the bank. Mr. McGee jumped off and fell into the water, but struck out and managed to clamber up the bank. Then he got up on the hills and remained out all night guarding his treasure.
At dawn of Thursday the stillness of the night, which had been punctured frequently by the pistol and musket shots of vigilant guards scaring off possible marauders, was permanently fractured by the arousing of gangs of laborers who had slept about wherever they could find a soft spot in the ruins, as well as in tents set up in the centre of where the town used to be. The soldiers in their camps were seen about later, and the railroad gang of several hundred men set out up the track toward where they had left off work the night before. Breakfast was cooked at hundreds of camp-fires, and about brick-kilns, and wherever else a fire could be got. At seven o’clock five thousand laborers struck pick and shovel and saw into the square miles of débris heaped over the city’s site. At the same time more laborers began to arrive on trains and march through the streets in long gangs toward the place where they were needed. Those whose work was to be pulling and hauling trailed along in lines, holding to their ropes. They looked like gangs of slaves being driven to a market. By the time the forenoon was well under way, seven thousand laborers were at work in the city under the direction of one hundred foremen. There were five hundred cars and as many teams, and half a dozen portable hoisting engines, besides regular locomotives and trains of flat cars that were used in hauling off débris that could not be burned. With this force of men and appliances at work the ruined city, looked at from the bluffs, seemed to fairly swarm with life, wherever the flood had left anything to be removed. The whole lower part of the city, except just above the bridge, remained the deserted mud desert that the waters left. There was no cleaning up necessary there. Through the upper part of the city, where the houses were simply smashed to kindling wood and piled into heaps, but not ground to pieces under the whirlpool that bore down on the rest of the city, acres of bonfires have burned all day. The stifling smoke, blown by a high wind, has made life almost unendurable, and the flames have twirled about so fiercely in the gusts as to scorch the workmen some distance away. Citizens whose houses were not damaged beyond salvation have almost got to work in clearing out their homes and trying to make them somewhere near habitable. In the poorer parts of the city often one story and a half frame cottages are seen completely surrounded by heaps of débris tossed up high above their roofs. Narrow lanes driven through the débris have given the owners entrance to their homes.
With all the work the apparent progress was small. A stranger seeing the place for the first time would never imagine that the wreck was not just as the flood left it. The enormity of the task of clearing the place grows more apparent the more the work is prosecuted, and with the force now at work the job cannot be done in less than a month. It will hardly be possible to find room for any larger force.
The railroads added largely to the bustle of the place. Long freight trains, loaded with food and clothing for the suffering, were continually coming in faster than they could be unloaded. Lumber was also arriving in great quantities, and hay and feed for the horses was heaped up high alongside the tracks. Hundreds of men were swarming over the road-bed near the Pennsylvania station, strengthening and improving the line. Work was begun on frame sheds and other temporary buildings in several places, and the rattle of hammers added its din to the shouts of the workmen and the crash of falling wreckage.
Some sort of organization is being introduced into other things about the city than the clearing away of the débris. The Post-office is established in a small brick building in the upper part of the city. Those of the letter carriers who are alive, and a few clerks, are the working force. The reception of mail consists of one damaged street letter-box set upon a box in front of the building and guarded by a carrier, who has also to see that there is no crowding in the long lines of people waiting to get their turn at the two windows where letters and stamps are served out. A wide board, stood up on end, is lettered rudely, “Post-office Bulletin,” and beneath is a slip of paper with the information that a mail will leave the city for the West during the day, and that no mail has been received. There are many touching things in these Post-office lines. It is a good place for acquaintances who lived in different parts of the city to find out whether each is alive or dead.
“You are through all right, I see,” said one man in the line to an acquaintance who came up this morning.
“Yes,” said the acquaintance.
“And how’s your folks? They all right, too?” was the next question.
“Two of them are—them two little ones sitting on the steps there. The mother and the other three have gone down.”
Such conversations as this take place every few minutes. Near the Post-office is the morgue for that part of the city, and other lines of waiting people reach out from there, anxious for a glimpse at the contents of the twenty-five coffins ranged in lines in front of the school-building, that does duty for a dead-house. Only those who have business are admitted, but the number is never a small one. Each walks along the lines of coffins, raises the cover over the face, glances in, drops the cover quickly, and passes on. Men bearing ghastly burdens on stretchers pass frequently into the school-house, where the undertakers prepare the bodies for identification.
A little farther along is the relief headquarters for that part of the city, and the streets there are packed all day long with women and children with baskets on their arms. So great is the demand that the people have to stand in line for an hour to get their turn. A large unfinished building is turned into a storehouse for clothing, and the people throng into it empty-handed and come out with arms full of underclothing and other wearing apparel. At another building the sanitary bureau is serving out disinfectants.
The workmen upon the débris in what was the heart of the city have now reached well into the ruins and are getting to where the valuable contents of jewelry and other stores may be expected to be found, and strict watch is being kept to prevent the theft of any such articles by the workmen or others. In the ruins of the Wood, Morrell & Co. general store a large amount of goods, chiefly provisions and household utensils, has been found in fairly good order. It is piled in a heap as fast as gotten out, and the building is being pulled down.
About the worst heap of wreckage in the centre of the city is where the Cambria Library building stood, opposite the general store. This was a very substantial and handsome building and offered much obstruction to the flood. It was completely destroyed, but upon its site a mass of trees, logs, heavy beams, and other wreckage was left, knotted together into a mass only extricable by the use of the ax and saw. Two hundred men have worked at it for three days and it is not half removed yet.
The Cambria Iron Company have several acres of gravel and clay to remove from the upper end of its yard. Except for an occasional corner of some big iron machine that projects above the surface no one would ever suspect that it was not the original earth. In one place a freight car brake-wheel lies just on the surface of the ground, apparently dropped there loosely. Any one who tries to kick it aside or pick it up finds that it is still attached to its car, which is buried under a solid mass of gravel and broken rock. Several lanes have been dug through this mass down to the old railroad tracks, and two or three of the little yard engines of the iron company, resurrected with smashed smoke-stacks and other light damage, but workable yet, go puffing about hardly visible above the general level of the new-made ground.
The progress of the work upon the black and still smoking mass of charred ruins above the bridge is hardly perceptible. There is clear water for about one hundred feet back from the central arch, and a little opening before the two on each side of it. When there is a good-sized hole made before all three of these arches, through which the bulk of the water runs, it is expected that the stuff can be pulled apart and set afloat much more rapidly. Dynamiter Kirk, who is overseeing the work, used up the last one hundred pounds of the explosive early this afternoon, and had to suspend operations until the arrival of two hundred pounds more that was on the way from Pittsburgh. The dynamite has been used in small doses for fear of damaging the bridge. Six pounds was the heaviest charge used. Even with this the stone beneath the arches of the bridge is charred and crumbling in places, and some pieces have been blown out of the heavy coping. The whole structure shakes as though with an earthquake at every discharge.
The dynamite is placed in holes drilled in logs matted into the surface of the raft, and its effect being downward, the greatest force of the explosion is upon the mass of stuff beneath the water. At the same time each charge sent up into the air, one hundred feet or more, a fountain of dirt, stones, and blackened fragments of logs, many of them large enough to be dangerous. The rattling crash of their fall upon the bridge follows hard after the heavy boom of the explosion. One of the worst and most unexpected objects with which the men on the raft have to contend is the presence in it of hundreds of miles of telegraph wire wound around almost everything there and binding the whole mass together.
No bodies have yet been brought to the surface by the operations with dynamite, but indications of several buried beneath the surface are evident. A short distance back from where the men are not at work, bodies continue to be taken out from the surface of the raft at the rate of ten or a dozen a day. The men this afternoon came across hundreds of feet of polished copper pipe, which is said to have come from a Pullman car. It was not known until then that there was a Pullman car in that part of the raft. The remnants of a vestibule car are plainly seen at a point a hundred feet away from this.
CHAPTER XXX.
The first thing that Johnstown people do in the morning is to go to the relief stations and get something to eat. They go carrying big baskets, and their endeavor is to get all they can. There has been a new system every day about the manner of dispensing the food and clothing to the sufferers. At first the supplies were placed where people could help themselves. Then they were placed in yards and handed to people over the fences. Then people had to get orders for what they wanted from the Citizens Committee, and their orders were filled at the different relief stations. Now the whole matter of receiving and dispensing relief supplies has been placed in the hands of the Grand Army of the Republic men. Thomas A. Stewart, commander of the Department of Pennsylvania, G. A. R., arrived with his staff and established his headquarters in a tent near the headquarters of the Citizens Committee, and opposite the temporary post-office. Over this tent floats Commander Stewart’s flag, with purple border, bearing the arms of the State of Pennsylvania. The members of his staff are: Quartermaster-General Tobin Taylor and his assistant H. J. Williams, Chaplain John W. Sayres, and W. V. Lawrence, quartermaster-general of the Ohio Department. The Grand Army men have made the Adams Street relief station a central relief station, and all the others, at Kernville, the Pennsylvania depot, Cambria City, and Jackson and Somerset Street, sub-stations. The idea is to distribute supplies to the sub-stations from the central station, and thus avoid the jam of crying and excited people at the committee’s headquarters.
The Grand Army men have appointed a committee of women to assist them in their work. The women go from house to house, ascertaining the number of people quartered there, the number of people lost from there in the flood, and the exact needs of the people. It was found necessary to have some such committee as this, for there were women actually starving, who were too proud to take their places in line with the other women with bags and baskets. Some of these people were rich before the flood. Now they are not worth a dollar. A Sun reporter was told of one man who was reported to be worth $100,000 before the flood, but who now is penniless, and who has to take his place in the line along with others seeking the necessaries of life.
Though the Adams Street station is now the central relief station, the most imposing display of supplies is made at the Pennsylvania Railroad freight and passenger depots. Here, on the platforms and in the yards, are piled up barrels of flour in long rows, three and four barrels high; biscuits in cans and boxes, where car-loads of them have been dumped; crackers, under the railroad sheds in bins; hams, by the hundred, strung on poles; boxes of soap and candles, barrels of kerosene oil, stacks of canned goods, and things to eat of all sorts and kinds. The same is visible at the Baltimore and Ohio road, and there is now no fear of a food famine in Johnstown, though of course everybody will have to rough it for weeks. What is needed most in this line is cooking utensils. Johnstown people want stoves, kettles, pans, knives, and forks. All the things that have been sent so far have been sent with the evident idea of supplying an instant need, and that is right and proper, but it would be well now, if, instead of some of the provisions that are sent, cooking utensils would arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this morning, and it is said that more are coming.
At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big rope-line incloses them in an impromptu yard, so as to give room to those having them in charge to walk around and see what they have got. On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers, with their rifles on their shoulders, and, beside the lines pressing against the ropes, there stands every day, from daylight until dawn, a crowd of women with big baskets, who make piteous appeals to the soldiers to give them food for their children at once, before the order of the relief committee. Those to whom supplies are dealt out at the stations have to approach in a line, and this line is fringed with soldiers, Pittsburgh policemen, and deputy sheriffs, who see that the children and weak women are not crowded out of their places by the stronger ones. The supplies are not given in large quantities, but the applicants are told to come again in a day or so and more will be given them. The women complain against this bitterly, and go away with tears in their eyes, declaring that they have not been given enough. Other women utter broken words of thankfulness and go away, their faces wreathed in smiles.
One night something in the nature of a raid was made by Father McTahney, one of the Catholic priests here, on the houses of some people whom he suspected of having imposed upon the relief committee. These persons represented that they were destitute, and sent their children with baskets to the relief stations, each child getting supplies for a different family. There are unquestionably many such cases. Father McTahney found that his suspicions were correct in a great many cases, and he brought back and made the wrong-doers bring back the provisions which they had obtained under false pretenses.
The side tracks at both the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depots are filled with cars sent from different places, bearing relief supplies to Johnstown. The cars are nearly all freight cars, and they contain the significant inscriptions of the railroad officials: “This car is on time freight. It is going to Johnstown, and must not be delayed under any circumstances.” Then, there are the ponderous labels of the towns and associations sending the supplies. They read this way: “This car for Johnstown with supplies for the sufferers.” “Braddock relief for Johnstown.” “The contributions of Beaver Falls to Johnstown.” The cars from Pittsburgh had no inscriptions. Some cars had merely the inscription, in great big black letters on a white strip of cloth running the length of the car, “Johnstown.” One car reads on it: “Stations along the route fill this car with supplies for Johnstown, and don’t delay it.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
At the end of the week Adjutant-General Hastings moved his headquarters from the signal tower and the Pennsylvania Railroad depot to the eastern end of the Pennsylvania freight depot. Here the general and his staff sleep on the hard floor, with only a blanket under them. They have their work systematized and in good shape, though about all they have done or will do is to prevent strangers and others who have no business here from entering the city. The entire regiment which is here is disposed around the city in squads of two or three men each. The men are scattered up and down the Conemaugh, away out on the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad tracks, along Stony Creek on the southern side of the town, and even upon the hills. It is impossible for any one to get into town by escaping the guards, for there is a cordon of soldiers about it. General Hastings rides around on a horse, inspecting the posts, and the men on guard present arms to him in due form, he returning the salute. The sight is a singular one, for General Hastings is not in uniform, and in fact wears a very rusty civilian’s dress. He wears a pair of rubber boots covered with mud, and a suit of old, well-stained, black clothes. His coat is a cutaway. His appearance among his staff officers is still more dramatic, for the latter, being ordered out and having time to prepare, are in gold lace and feathers and glittering uniforms.
General Hastings came here right after the flood, on the spur of the moment, and not in his official capacity. He rides his horse finely and looks every inch a soldier. He has established in his headquarters in the freight depot a very much-needed bureau for the answering of telegrams from friends of Johnstown people making inquiries as to the latter’s safety. The bureau is in charge of A. K. Parsons, who has done good work since the flood, and who, with Lieutenant George Miller, of the Fifth Infantry, U. S. A., General Hastings’ right-hand man, has been with the general constantly. The telegrams in the past have all been sent to the headquarters of the Citizens Committee, in the Fourth Ward Hotel, and have laid there, along with telegrams of every sort, in a little heap on a little side table in one corner of the room. Three-quarters of them were not called for, and people who knew that telegrams were there for them did not have the patience to look through the heap for them. Finally some who were not worried to death took the telegrams, opened them all, and pinned them in separate packages in alphabetical order and then put them back on the table again, and they have been pored over, until their edges are frayed, by all the people who crowded into the little low-roofed room where Dictator Scott and his messengers are. There were something like three thousand telegrams there in all. Occasionally a few are taken away, but in the majority of cases they remain there. The persons to whom they were sent are dead or have not taken the trouble to come to headquarters and see if their friends are inquiring after them. Of course the Western Union Telegraph Company makes no effort to deliver the messages. This would be impossible.