Chapter XXII (2)

A man who was above the danger line on the right bluff above the town, and who saw the first rush of the death wave, says that it was preceded by a peculiar phenomena, which he thinks was the explosion of the gas mains. He says that a few minutes before the wall of the water had reached the city there was a tremendous explosion somewhere in the upper part of the place. He said that he saw the fragments of the buildings rise in the air, and the next moment saw two lines of flame down through the city in different directions, and frame buildings were apparently being torn to pieces and wrecked. The next minute the water came, and he remembers nothing further. There really was an explosion of gas that wrecked a church in the upper part of the city just at the time of the flood. If there was also an explosion of the gas main, the cause of the fire at the bridge is explained. Light frame buildings set on fire by the explosion were picked up bodily and tossed on top of the water into the wreck at the bridge without the fire being extinguished.

Mrs. Fredericks, an aged woman, was rescued alive from the attic in her house. The house had floated from what was formerly Vine street to the foot of the mountains. Mrs. Fredericks says her experience was terrible. She said she saw hundreds of men, women and children floating down the torrent to meet their death, some praying, while others had actually become raving maniacs.

THE REAL HORRORS OF THE DISASTER.

"No one will ever know the real horrors of this accident unless he saw the burning people and debris beside the stone bridge," remarked the Rev. Father Trautwein. "The horrible nature of the affair cannot be realized by any person who did not witness the scene. As soon as possible after the first great crash occurred I hastened to the bridge.

"A thousand persons were struggling in the ruins and imploring for God's sake to release them. Frantic husbands and fathers stood at the edge of the furnace that was slowly heating to a cherry heat and incinerating human victims. Every one was anxious to save his own relatives, and raved, cursed, and blasphemed until the air appeared to tremble. No system, no organized effort to release the pent-up persons was made by those related to them.

"Shrieking they would command: 'Go to that place, go get her out, for God's sake get her out,' referring to some beloved one they wanted saved.

"Under the circumstances it was necessary to secure organization, and thinking I was trying to thwart their efforts when I ordered another point to be attacked by the rescuers, they advanced upon me, threatened to shoot me or dash me into the raging river.

"One man who was trying to steer a float upon which his wife sat on a mattress lost his hold, and in a moment the craft swept into a sea of flame and never again appeared. The agony of that man was simply heartrending. He raised his arms to heaven and screamed in his mental anguish and only ceased that to tear his hair and moan like one distracted. Every effort was made to save every person accessible, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that fully 200 were saved from cremation. One young woman was found under the dead body of a relative.

"A force of men attempted to extricate her and succeeded in releasing every limb but one leg. For three hours they labored, and every moment the flames crept nearer and nearer. I was on the point several times of ordering the men to chop her leg off. It would have been much better to save her life even at that loss than have her burn to death. Fortunately it was not necessary; but the young lady's escape from mutilation or death she will never realize."

The flood and fire claimed among its victims not only the living, but the dead. A handsome coffin was found half burned in some charred wreckage down near the point. Inside was found the body of a man shrouded for burial, but so scorched about the head and face as to be unrecognizable. The supposition is that the house in which the dead man had lain had been crushed and the debris partly consumed by fire. The body is still at the Fourth Ward school house, and unless reclaimed it will be buried in the unknown field.

THE CLOCK STOPPED AT 5:20.

One of the queerest sights in the center of the town was a three-story brick residence standing with one wall, the others having disappeared completely, leaving the floors supported by the partitions. In one of the upper rooms could be seen a mantel with a lambrequin on it and a clock stopped at twenty minutes after five. In front of the clock was a lady's fan, though from the marks on the wall paper the water had been over all these things.

In the upper part of the town, where the back water from the flood went into the valley with diminished force, there were many strange scenes.

There the houses were toppled over one after another in a row, and left where they lay. One of them was turned completely over and stood with its roof on the foundations of another house and its base in the air. The owner came back, and getting into his house through the windows, walked about on his ceiling.

Out of this house a woman and her two children escaped safely and were but little hurt, although they were stood on their heads in the whirl.

Every house had its own story. From one a woman sent up in her garret escaped by chopping a hole in the roof. From another a Hungarian named Grevins leaped to the shore as it went whirling past and fell twenty-five feet upon a pile of metal and escaped with a broken leg.

Another is said to have come all the way from very near the start of the flood and to have circled around with the back water and finally landed on the flats at the city site, where it is still pointed out.

THE SITUATION NINE DAYS AFTER.

A correspondent described the situation at Johnstown nine days after the disaster in this way:

"So vast is the field of destruction that to get an adequate idea from any point level with the town is simply impossible. It must be viewed from a height. From the top of Kernsville Mountain, just at the east of the town, the whole strange panorama can be seen.

"Looking down from the height many things about the flood that appear inexplicable from below are perfectly plain. How so many houses happened to be so queerly twisted, for instance, as if the water had a twirling instead of a straight motion, was made perfectly clear.

"The town was built in an almost equilateral triangle, with one angle pointed squarely up the Conemaugh Valley to the east, from which the flood came. At the northerly angle was the junction of the Conemaugh and Stony creeks. The southern angle pointed up the Stony Creek Valley. Now about one-half of the triangle, formerly densely covered with buildings, is swept as clear as a platter, except for three or four big brick buildings that stand near the angle which points up the Conemaugh.

"The course of the flood, from the exact point where it issued from the Conemaugh Valley to where it disappeared below in a turn in the river and above by spreading itself over the flat district of five or six miles, is clearly defined. The whole body of water issued straight from the valley in a solid wave and tore across the village of Woodvale and so on to the business part of Johnstown at the lower part of the triangle. Here a cluster of solid brick blocks, aided by the conformation of the land evidently divided the stream.

"The greater part turned to the north, swept up the brick block and then mixed with the ruins of the villages above down to the stone arch bridge. The other stream shot across the triangle, was turned southward by the bluffs and went up the valley of Stony creek. The stone arch bridge in the meantime acted as a dam and turned part of the current back toward the south, where it finished the work of the triangle, turning again to the northward and back to the stone arch bridge.

"The stream that went up Stony creek was turned back by the rising ground and then was reinforced by the back water from the bridge again and started south, where it reached a mile and a half and spent its force on a little settlement called Grubbtown.

"The frequent turning of this stream, forced against the buildings and then the bluffs, gave it a regular whirling motion from right to left, and made a tremendous eddy, whose centrifugal force twisted everything it touched. This accounts for the comparatively narrow path of the flood through the southern part of the town, where its course through the thickly clustered frame dwelling houses is as plain as a highway.

"The force of the stream diminished gradually as it went south, for at the place where the currents separated every building is ground to pieces and carried away, and at the end the houses were only turned a little on their foundations. In the middle of the course they are turned over on their sides or upside down. Further down they are not single, but great heaps of ground lumber that look like nothing so much as enormous pith balls.

"To the north the work of the waters is of a different sort. It picked up everything except the big buildings that divided the current and piled the fragments down upon the stone bridge or swept them over and so on down the river for miles.

"This left the great yellow, sandy and barren plain, so often spoken of in the dispatches where stood the best buildings in Johnstown--the opera house, the big hotel, many wholesale warehouses, shops and the finest residences.

"In this plain there are now only the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train, a school house, the Morrell Company's store and an adjoining warehouse and the few buildings of the triangle. One brick residence, badly shattered, is also standing.

"These structures do not relieve the shocking picture of ruin spread out below the mountains, but by contrast making it more striking. That part of the town to the south where the flood tore the narrow path there used to be a separate village which was called Kernsville. It is now known as the South Side. Some of the queerest sights of the wreck are there, though few persons have gone to see them.

"Many of the houses that are left, there scattered helter skelter, thrown on their sides and standing on their roofs, were never in that neighborhood nor anywhere near it before. They came down on the breast of the wave from as far up as Franklin, were carried safely by the factories and the bridges, by the big buildings at the dividing line, up and down on the flood and finally settled in their new resting places little injured.

"A row of them, packed closely together and every one tipped over at about the same angle, is only one of the queer freaks the water played.

"I got into one of these houses in my walk through the town to-day. The lower story had been filled with water and everything in it had been torn out. The carpet had been split into strips on the floor by the sheer force of the rushing tide. Heaps of mud stood in the corners. There was no vestige of furniture. The walls dripped with moisture.

"The ceiling was gone, the windows were out and the cold rain blew in and the only thing that was left intact was one of those worked worsted mottoes that you always expect to find in the homes of working people. It still hung to the wall, and though much awry the glass and frame were unbroken. The motto looked grimly and sadly sarcastic. It was:--

'There is no place like home.'

"A melancholy wreck of a home that motto looked down upon.

"I saw a wagon in the middle of a side street sticking tongue and all straight up into the air, resting on its tail board, with the hind wheels almost completely buried in the mud. I saw a house standing exactly in the middle of Napoleon street, the side stove in by crashing against some other house and in the hole the coffin of its owner was placed.

"Some scholar's library had been strewn over the street in the last stage of the flood, for there was a trail of good books left half sticking in the mud and reaching for over a block. One house had been lifted over two others in some mysterious way and then had settled down between them and there it stuck, high up in the air, so its former occupants might have got into it again with ladders.

"Down at the lower end of the course of the stream, where its force was greater, there was a house lying on one corner and held there by being fastened in the deep mud. Through its side the trunk of a tree had been driven like a lance, and there it stayed sticking out straight in the air.

"In the muck was the case and key board of a square piano, and far down the river, near the debris about the stone bridge, were its legs. An upright piano, with all its inside apparatus cleanly taken out, stood straight up a little way off. What was once a set of costly furniture was strewn all about it, and the house that had contained it was nowhere.

"The remarkable stories that have been told about people floating a mile up the river and then back two or three times are easily credible after seeing the evidences of the strange course the flood took in this part of the town. People who stood near the ruins of Poplar Bridge saw four women on a roof float up on the stream, turn a short distance above and come back and go past again and once more return. Then they were seen to go far down on the current to the lower part of the town and were rescued as they passed the second-story window of a school house. A man who was imprisoned in the attic of his house put his wife and two children on a roof that was eddying past and stayed behind to die alone. They floated up the stream and then came back and got upon the roof of the very house they had left, and the whole family were saved.

"At Grubbtown there is a house which came all the way from Woodvale. On it was a man who lived near Grubbtown, but was working at Woodvale when the flood came. He was carried right past his own home, and coolly told the people at the bridge to bid his wife good-bye for him. The house passed the bridge three times, the man carrying on a conversation with the people on the shore and giving directions for his burial if his body should be found.

"The third time the house went up it grounded at Grubbtown, and in an hour or two the man was safe at home. Three girls who went by on a roof crawled into the branches of a tree, and had to stay there all night before they could make anyone understand where they were. At one time scores of floating houses were wedged in together near the ruins of Poplar street bridge. Four brave men went out from the shore, and stepping from house-roof to house-roof brought in twelve women and children.

"Some women crawled from roofs into the attics of houses. In their struggles with the flood most of their clothes had been torn from them, and rather than appear on the streets they stayed where they were until hunger forced them to shout out of the window for help. At this stage of the flood more persons were lost by being crushed to death than by drowning. As they floated by on roofs or doors the toppling houses fell over upon them and killed them.

"The workers began on the wreck on Main street just opposite the First National Bank, one of the busiest parts of the city. A large number of people were lost here, the houses being crushed on one side of the street and being almost untouched on the other, a most remarkable thing considering the terrific force of the flood. Twenty-one bodies were taken out in the early morning and taken to the morgue. They were not much injured, considering the weight of lumber above them.

"In many instances they were wedged in crevices. They were all in a good state of preservation, and when they were embalmed they looked almost lifelike. In this central part of the city examination is sure to result in the unearthing of bodies in every corner. Cottages which are still standing are banked up with lumber and driftwood, and it is like mining to make any kind of a clear space.

"Thirteen bodies were taken from the burning debris at the Stone Bridge at one time yesterday afternoon. None of the bodies were recognizable, and they were put in coffins and buried immediately. They were so badly decomposed that it was impossible to keep them until they could be identified. During a blast at the bridge yesterday afternoon two bodies were almost blown to pieces. The blasting has had the effect of opening the channel under the central portion of the bridge.

"The order that was issued that all unidentified dead be buried is being rapidly carried out. The Rev. Mr. Beall, who has charge of the morgue at the Fourth Ward school house, which is the chief place, says that a large force of men has been put at work digging graves, and at the close of the afternoon the remains will be laid away as rapidly as it can be done.

"William Flynn has taken charge of the army of eleven hundred laborers who are doing a wonderful amount of work. In an interview he told of the work that has to be done, and the contractors' estimates show more than anything the chaotic condition of this city. 'It will take ten thousand men thirty days to clear the ground so that the streets are passable and the work of rebuilding can be commenced,' said he, 'and I am at a loss to know how the work is to be done. This enthusiasm will soon die out and the volunteers will want to return home.

"'It would take all summer for my men alone to do what work is necessary. Steps must be taken at once to furnish gangs of workmen, and I shall send a communication to the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce asking the different manufacturers of the Ohio Valley to take turns for a month or so in furnishing reliefs of workmen.

"'I shall ask that each establishment stop work for a week at a time and send all hands in the charge of a foreman and timekeeper. We will board and care for them here. These gangs should come for a week at a time, as no organization can be affected if workmen arrive and leave when they please.'

"A meeting was held here in the afternoon which resulted in the appointment of James B. Scott, of Pittsburg, generalissimo.

"Mr. Scott in an interview said that he proposed to clear the town of all wreckage and debris of all descriptions and turn the town site over to the citizens when he has completed his work clean and free from obstructions of all kinds.

"I was here when the gang came across one of the upper stories of a house. It was merely a pile of boards apparently, but small pieces of a bureau and a bed spring from which the clothes had been burned showed the nature of the find. A faint odor of burned flesh prevailed exactly at this spot.

"'Dig here,' said the physician to the men. 'There is one body at least quite close to the surface.' The men started in with a will. A large pile of underclothes and household linen was brought up first. It was of fine quality and evidently such as would be stored in the bedroom of a house occupied by people quite well to do.

"Presently one of the men exposed a charred lump of flesh and lifted it up on the end of a pitchfork. It was all that remained of some poor creature who had met an awful death between water and fire.

"The trunk was put on a cloth, the ends were looped up, making a bag of it, and the thing was taken to the river bank. It weighed probably thirty pounds. A stake was driven in the ground to which a tag was attached giving a description of the remains. This is done in many cases to the burned bodies, and they lay covered with cloths upon the bank until men came with coffins to remove them."