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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Not long ago, we did a podcast on

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Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie, and one of the questions that we got

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Speaker 1: from listeners afterward was why we had not discussed the

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Speaker 1: Johnstown flood. Carnegie was a member of the South Fork

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Speaker 1: Fishing and Hunting Club, which owned the damn that failed

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Speaker 1: in that flood, and the whole area had a number

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Speaker 1: of other connections to Carnegie Steel. Carnegie contributed to relief

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Speaker 1: efforts after the flood, and he funded the building of

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Speaker 1: a new library for the town, but neither he nor

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Speaker 1: any of the other members of the club ever expressed

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Speaker 1: any responsibility for the disaster. So there's a whole episode

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Speaker 1: about that flood in the archive from from Past host

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Speaker 1: Sarah and Deblina, and since it came up in our

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Speaker 1: listener mail recently, we thought we would share it again today.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Deblina Chokolate Boarding and depending on where you live, you've

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Speaker 1: probably gotten used to the threat of a particular type

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Speaker 1: of natural disaster. I remember where I grew up, it

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Speaker 1: was always tornadoes that people were afraid of, and that

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Speaker 1: came through the area a lot, and when I lived

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Speaker 1: on the Gulf Coast, it was hurricanes, of course. And

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Speaker 1: for the thirty thousand people who lived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty nine, what they had gotten used to

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Speaker 1: dealing with was floods. Yeah. Located in a floodplain at

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Speaker 1: the confluence of two rivers, Johnstown flooded really frequently, so

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Speaker 1: it was pretty common to see water in the streets,

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Speaker 1: and locals had gotten used to moving their valuables and

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Speaker 1: themselves to the upper floors of their homes when the

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Speaker 1: floodwater started to roll it. They had kind of a

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Speaker 1: routine exactly with it. But on May thirty one, eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighty nine, a flood of such magnitude hit the town

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Speaker 1: that even those who were holed up in their homes

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Speaker 1: upper levels weren't ready for it. It's been called one

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Speaker 1: of the worst is susters in American history, and nobody

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Speaker 1: in Johnstown really saw it coming. So that's partially because

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Speaker 1: there was more to this natural disaster than just nature,

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Speaker 1: and that's part of what we're going to take a

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Speaker 1: look at today. First, though, we're gonna paint a little

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Speaker 1: picture of Johnstown for you so you can understand why

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Speaker 1: it flooded so frequently in the first place, and then

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Speaker 1: just what kind of community it was at the time too.

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Speaker 1: So nineteenth century Johnstown was a busy industrial town in

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Speaker 1: southwestern Pennsylvania, and according to an article by Amy Lynn

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Speaker 1: Brown in National Parks, entrepreneurs had not too long before

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Speaker 1: turned it into a larger industrial sort of production area

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Speaker 1: of steel and iron um, and not long before that

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Speaker 1: it had just been this small rural community. So a

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Speaker 1: real dramatic change for Johnstown, and it had a burgeoning

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Speaker 1: working class community that lived there too. The town itself

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Speaker 1: was kind of hempt in by the Little Conema and

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Speaker 1: the Stony Creek rivers, which ran along the edges of

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Speaker 1: Johnstown and then merged on the town's western end to

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Speaker 1: form the Connuma River. These rivers flooded the town at

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Speaker 1: least once every year, and there were a couple of

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Speaker 1: reasons for that, a couple of possible I guess instigators

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Speaker 1: for the flooding. Flooding causes right One was snow melting

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Speaker 1: and draining from the nearby Allegheny Mountains into the rivers

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Speaker 1: in the springtime, specifically, which would cause the rivers to overflow,

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Speaker 1: and then of course at any time of year, heavy

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Speaker 1: rain could also cause flooding flood the river. So those

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Speaker 1: were the natural surroundings of the town. But there was

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Speaker 1: also a man made body of water that was nearby.

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Speaker 1: It was fourteen miles up the Little Connuma River, and

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Speaker 1: it was called Lake Connuma, although I don't think of

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Speaker 1: it as as some sort of natural lake. It was

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Speaker 1: originally called the Western Reservoir, and it had originally been

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Speaker 1: created to supply water for the Pennsylvania Canal that went

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Speaker 1: between Johnstown and Pittsburgh, but the canal system became obsolete

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Speaker 1: not long after the reservoir project was complete, so not

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Speaker 1: having anything to do with this large body of water,

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Speaker 1: the reservoir was sold and had a few different owners

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Speaker 1: before it was finally sold to the South Fork Fishing

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Speaker 1: and Hunting Club in eighteen seventy nine. The club made

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Speaker 1: this former reservoir into a bit of a ritzy social

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Speaker 1: affair almost it did, uh and it was a organization

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Speaker 1: to which many prominent Pennsylvanians belonged, including big names like

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Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. And members

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Speaker 1: would go to this club to kind of escape the

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Speaker 1: industrial environs of Pittsburgh and enjoy things like fishing, sailing,

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Speaker 1: even musical performances, and it was the club that renamed

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Speaker 1: the reservoir Lake Conema. Just an important note to make here,

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Speaker 1: the dam that kept Lake Conuma contained. The South Fork

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Speaker 1: Dam was essentially made of packed dirt and rocks, and

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Speaker 1: it had not been kept up properly for a number

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Speaker 1: of years by the time it came into the club's

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Speaker 1: possession well, and most disturbingly, somebody had even taken out

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Speaker 1: the damn's drainage pipes that at some point in order

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Speaker 1: to sell them for scraps, so there wasn't any way

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Speaker 1: to drain the reservoir in order to make repair. So

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Speaker 1: even if you had wanted to repair the damn, you

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Speaker 1: would not have been able to. According to the Johnstown

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Speaker 1: Flood Museum, when the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club

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Speaker 1: took over, it started maintaining the dam a little bit better,

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Speaker 1: but they also made some changes to it that made

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Speaker 1: it even less safe. For example, they added some screens

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Speaker 1: across the spill way to keep the expensive game fish

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Speaker 1: that they had stock the lake with from escaping, and

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Speaker 1: this prevented the spill away from draining the lake's overflow.

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Speaker 1: They also made the damn a couple feet lower so

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Speaker 1: that two carriages could pass over it at the same time.

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Speaker 1: So this is we've panted a picture of of what

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Speaker 1: the situation was like uh in May of eight nine,

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Speaker 1: and from a weather standpoint, that spring had been rather unique,

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Speaker 1: according to an article by Emily Lorditch and weatherwise, a

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Speaker 1: series of storms had led to record breaking rainfall that year,

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Speaker 1: so we were getting the perfect storm here, as you

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Speaker 1: can tell. On May thirty one, the residents of Johnstown

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Speaker 1: were experiencing a particularly heavy storm, and Brown writes that

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Speaker 1: rain was falling at a rate of an inch per

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Speaker 1: hour and rivers were running six to seven ft above

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Speaker 1: normal levels. By afternoon, the streets in town were already flooding,

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Speaker 1: so people were going through their their normal routine. When

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Speaker 1: there was a flood, head up to the upper floors,

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Speaker 1: ride out the storm, you know, put some of your

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Speaker 1: belongings upstairs. Again, just a very typical sort of scene

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Speaker 1: for Johnstown. What they didn't know is that fourteen miles

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Speaker 1: up at Lake Conoma, a scene was taking place that

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Speaker 1: was entirely unprecedented. Depth of the water of the foy

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Speaker 1: Acre Lake was sixty ft near the dam, and officials

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Speaker 1: at the club had been watching that level continued to

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Speaker 1: rise during the storm with great concern. Of course, the

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Speaker 1: morning of May thirty one, they were so worried about

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Speaker 1: the damn collapsing that they actually started to think about

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Speaker 1: taking action. And I mean people in Johnstown, just another

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Speaker 1: aside here, had sort of known that the dam failing

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Speaker 1: and the dam breaking down was a possibility because of

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Speaker 1: the condition of the dam, and some people even joked

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Speaker 1: about it. And this kind of reminds me of when

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Speaker 1: you do live in an area where a certain type

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Speaker 1: of natural disaster sort of prevalent, Like I remember living

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Speaker 1: on the coast and when hurricanes would come, there were

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Speaker 1: always people who just sort of didn't really take it seriously. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: There's always that contingent of people, I think. But in

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Speaker 1: this case, when the people at the club saw what

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Speaker 1: was happening, they did try to take a few steps,

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Speaker 1: as I said, for to keep the dam from failing.

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Speaker 1: They for example, added dirt to the top. They also

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Speaker 1: dug a second spill way to relieve the pressure, and

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Speaker 1: they removed the screens that kept the stocked fish from escaping.

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Speaker 1: But it was too late. It was too late. At

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Speaker 1: this point, nothing they did was able to help, and

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Speaker 1: at about three pm that day, people at the club

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Speaker 1: and in the nearby community of South Fork watched in

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Speaker 1: shock as the damn quote just moved away, sending twenty

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Speaker 1: million tons of water barreling down the valley. Of course,

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Speaker 1: headed right towards Johnstown in just a matter of minutes,

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Speaker 1: and according to Gene Allen's book Floods, the club wasn't

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Speaker 1: completely They were trying to take efforts to to save

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Speaker 1: the dam, but there was also a warning sent out.

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Speaker 1: I mean, a couple of guys had ridden through town

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Speaker 1: earlier shouting warnings that the dam was about to fail,

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Speaker 1: but people didn't really listen. I mean, like you were

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Speaker 1: just talking about there's kind of a an almost joke

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Speaker 1: like maybe the dam will fail, but people didn't really

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Speaker 1: think that was going to happen. Within an hour of

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Speaker 1: the dam failing, though, that twenty million tons of water

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Speaker 1: finally did reach Johnstown. It was traveling at speeds of

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Speaker 1: anywhere from twenty to forty miles per hour, and by

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Speaker 1: the time it reached the town it was said to

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Speaker 1: have had as much force as Niagara Falls, which is

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Speaker 1: just a stunning comparison to me. Well, and it created

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Speaker 1: a tidal wave too, it did. It was a tidal

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Speaker 1: wave of water that was forty ft high and carried

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Speaker 1: all sorts of debris with it by the time it

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Speaker 1: hit Johnstown, including industrial and farm debris, houses, barns, animals,

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Speaker 1: even people both dead and alive. The townspeople were totally

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Speaker 1: blindsided by this. Some people only heard a thunder like

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Speaker 1: sound as the wave approached. Apparently it only took ten

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Speaker 1: minutes basically to wash the entire town away. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: and really the entire town was washed away. Trains, entire

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Speaker 1: homes just swept up in the waves. So of course

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Speaker 1: people were swept up in it too. Some of course

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Speaker 1: drowned right away in the flood of rushing water. Others

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Speaker 1: were killed or injured by the debris that was in

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Speaker 1: the water. A lot of people and this is maybe

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Speaker 1: one of the more horrifying aspects of the flood. So

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Speaker 1: a lot of people, about three hundred to four hundred

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Speaker 1: ended up surviving initially but then getting swept away by

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Speaker 1: the rushing water and getting trapped up against this large

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Speaker 1: stone bridge that was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

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Speaker 1: And this bridge was actually blocking a lot of the

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Speaker 1: stuff that was rushing through the town, you know, box cars,

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Speaker 1: barbed wire, big chunks of homes, dead animals, creating this

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Speaker 1: this log jam. Essentially all the debris, though clogging the

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Speaker 1: bridge eventually did catch fire and the people trapped against

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Speaker 1: the bridge, of course, died at that point. Again, just

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Speaker 1: one of the most horrifying aspects of this already horrifying story. Ultimately, though,

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Speaker 1: about two thousand, two hundred nine people died in this disaster,

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Speaker 1: And just to give you a sense of what those

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Speaker 1: numbers mean for a town of Johnstown size, it's something

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Speaker 1: like one out of every ten people in the town.

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Speaker 1: Seven seventy of the victims were never identified. And the

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Speaker 1: number that Sarah just put out about the number of

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Speaker 1: people total who died that included nine entire families, six

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Speaker 1: hundred homes were destroyed, and seventeen million dollars in property

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Speaker 1: damage was done. So that was just to give you

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Speaker 1: an idea of the toll that this disaster took. Some people, however,

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Speaker 1: did survive by writing out the flood in their homes

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Speaker 1: or in the upper stories of other buildings in town.

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Speaker 1: Others took a crazy ride down the Connuma River and

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Speaker 1: were later rescued somewhere downstream, which is just wild to me.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I just said it's crazy, and

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Speaker 1: then I said it's wild, so I said that twice.

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Speaker 1: But I have nothing to add to that. It's hard

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Speaker 1: to imagine being actually carried alive barns and dead animals

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Speaker 1: going along with you. But as you can imagine, either

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Speaker 1: of these survival scenarios were pretty harrowing. And there are

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Speaker 1: fortunately a lot of examples though, a lot of records

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Speaker 1: from the flood, so we're able to see what it

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Speaker 1: was like for people and how they managed to survive.

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Speaker 1: And one story that gets retold a lot is the

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Speaker 1: story of a six year old girl named Gertrude Quinn Slatterly,

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Speaker 1: who was swept away by floodwaters while she was hanging

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Speaker 1: onto this muddy mattress as a kind of raft, and

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Speaker 1: as she recalled, she was terrified. She was calling out

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Speaker 1: for someone to help her, and this man dove into

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Speaker 1: the water to to save her. He made his way

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Speaker 1: over to her onto the mattress, lifted her up, and

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Speaker 1: she later wrote of the experience quote, I put both

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Speaker 1: arms around his neck and held onto him like grim death.

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Speaker 1: Together we went downstream and um Miraculously they eventually reached

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Speaker 1: this white building where men were leaning out the window

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Speaker 1: trying to nab people as they came by, rescuing people,

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Speaker 1: and the rescuer through Gertrude through the air. Some people

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Speaker 1: later said it was as much as fifteen to twenty

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Speaker 1: feet through the air uh to to safety for the

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Speaker 1: other guys to be able to catch her. Another woman,

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Speaker 1: Anna fn Maxwell, was in her home with her seven

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Speaker 1: children when the flood hit. She survived, but unfortunately her

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Speaker 1: kids weren't so lucky. The Johnstown Flood Museum actually shares

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Speaker 1: how she described the scene, and it's pretty sad. She said.

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Speaker 1: Quote the water rose and floated us until our heads

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Speaker 1: nearly touched the ceiling. It was dark, and the house

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Speaker 1: was tossing every way. The air was stifling, and I

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Speaker 1: could not tell just the moment the rest of the

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Speaker 1: children had to give up and drown. What I suffered

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Speaker 1: with the bodies of my seven children floating around me

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Speaker 1: and the gloom can never be told. Yeah. So pretty

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Speaker 1: powerful story and the Johnstown Flood Museum's website shares several

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Speaker 1: survival stories like this um. Some are more uplifting than

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Speaker 1: others of course. Um, in some cases too, we should

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Speaker 1: say entire families did survive. But it seems like you

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Speaker 1: would have had to have been very lucky, and all

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Speaker 1: your family members would have had to have been quite

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Speaker 1: lucky for that to be the case. One thing that

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Speaker 1: is remarkable about this flood, though, the relief efforts began

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Speaker 1: pretty much immediately, and people all over donated clothing and food, lumber,

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Speaker 1: medical supplies, money. Doctors came to town to to help

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Speaker 1: treat the injured. Within five days. Clara Barton and her

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Speaker 1: newly established American Red Cross we're in town. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: was the first peacetime disaster that the organization assisted in,

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Speaker 1: and they really did a lot. They built warehouses for

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Speaker 1: donated supplies to be stored, UM, hotels for for the homeless.

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Speaker 1: Buildings that were still standing were repurposed into makeshift morgues

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Speaker 1: to avoid the spread of disease, all all of that

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Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Um. It seems kind of un believable,

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Speaker 1: but all of these recovery efforts seemed to have paid

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Speaker 1: off almost immediately. According to Brown's article, it only took

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Speaker 1: a month for businesses to reopen and only five years

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Speaker 1: for the cleanup effort to be completed. This wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: the last time, however, that Johnstown would have to deal

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Speaker 1: with floods, even though the South Fork Dam was already destroyed,

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Speaker 1: so you would think of this big threat is taken away,

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Speaker 1: so that's not an issue. But in nineteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: Johnstown was hit with fourteen feet of floodwaters caused by

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Speaker 1: heavy rains combined with snow runoff. Twenty four people died

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Speaker 1: in this case and three thousand buildings were damaged or destroyed.

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Speaker 1: Then in July nine, seventy seven, there was another flood

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Speaker 1: caused by a line of thunderstorms that stalled over the

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Speaker 1: area and also the fact that several dams failed contributed

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Speaker 1: to this. In this case, five people died and there

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Speaker 1: was more than three hundred million dollars in property damage.

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Speaker 1: And after this third flood, the town's economy didn't cover

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Speaker 1: as well as it did the first couple of times.

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Speaker 1: Well you can imagine though, even after that eighteen eighty

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Speaker 1: nine flood, there was a lot of discussion about who

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Speaker 1: was to blame, because, as we've discussed, there was clearly

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Speaker 1: more going on than just the natural forces. You know,

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Speaker 1: the dam and its maintenance and many people did blame

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Speaker 1: the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for not taking

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Speaker 1: more steps to prevent the damn failure in the first place.

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Speaker 1: Of suits were even filed against the club, but they

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Speaker 1: never really went anywhere. And in discussing how the flood

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Speaker 1: of eighteen eighty nine didn't have to happen, Brown points

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Speaker 1: to general industrialization and population growth in the area really

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Speaker 1: being to blame. I mean, we talked about that at

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Speaker 1: the beginning of the show, how this had not too

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Speaker 1: long before turned from a rural, agricultural area where some

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Speaker 1: flooding wasn't terribly devastating at least, to life too of

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Speaker 1: densely populated industrial area. She includes a couple of oats

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Speaker 1: to that speak really well to this. One is from

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Speaker 1: David McCullough, who is a former podcast interviewee and he

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Speaker 1: wrote a book out. His first book, I think, was

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Speaker 1: about the Johnstown flood. He said, quote, with the valley

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Speaker 1: crowding up the way it was, the need for lumber

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Speaker 1: and land was growing apace. As a result, more and

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Speaker 1: more timber was being stripped off the mountains and near hills,

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Speaker 1: and in Johnstown the river channels were being narrowed to

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Speaker 1: make room for new buildings where the forests were destroyed.

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Speaker 1: Spring thaws and summer thunderstorms would send torrents racing down

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Speaker 1: the mountain sides, and each year the torrents grew worse

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Speaker 1: as the water itself tore away at the soil and

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Speaker 1: what little groundcover there was left. So this kind of

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Speaker 1: helps explain how the industrialization of the area would make

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Speaker 1: the flooding worse. Yeah, taking away the natural buffers that

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Speaker 1: could have helped alleviate natural floods and then making everything

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Speaker 1: worse too. Brown also quotes Megan O'Malley, who is the

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Speaker 1: chief of interpretation at the Johnstown Flood nash A Memorial,

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Speaker 1: and she says, quote, we call the flood a natural disaster,

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Speaker 1: but it was a disaster that occurred from a combination

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Speaker 1: of natural events and human manipulation of the environment. We

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Speaker 1: see that's happened over and over in human history. We

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Speaker 1: create preconditions for disaster, and then disaster occurs. And I

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Speaker 1: know similar arguments are often made about more recent natural disasters.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you see it pretty much every time there's

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Speaker 1: a natural disaster, maybe with the exception of tornadoes, because

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Speaker 1: I think everybody understands there's not a whole lot you

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Speaker 1: can do about that, but earthquakes, hurricanes, floods. Every time

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Speaker 1: you'll see a discussion that that's similar to that one. Um,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's just the way of the world. Thank

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Speaker 1: you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.

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Speaker 1: Since this is out of the archive, if you heard

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Speaker 1: an email address or a Facebook U r L or

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Speaker 1: something similar during the course of the show, that may

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Speaker 1: be obsolete now. So here is our current contact information.

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Speaker 1: We are at History Podcasts at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: and then we're at Missed in the History. All over

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Speaker 1: social media, that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram. Thanks again for listening. For more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.