0:00

Welcome to stuff you missed in history

0:02

class from housework dot Com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Debline

0:14

and chocolate Boarding. And And

0:16

depending on where you live, you've probably

0:18

gotten used to the threat of a particular type

0:20

of natural disaster. I remember where

0:22

I grew up, it was always tornadoes that people

0:25

were afraid of and that came through the area

0:27

a lot. And when I lived on the Gulf Coast, it

0:29

was hurricanes, of course. And

0:32

for the thirty thousand people who lived

0:34

in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in eight

0:36

nine, what they had gotten used to

0:38

dealing with was floods. Yeah. Located

0:41

in a floodplain at the confluence of

0:43

two rivers, Johnstown flooded

0:45

really frequently, so it was pretty common to see

0:47

water in the streets, and locals had gotten

0:50

used to moving their valuables and themselves

0:52

to the upper floors of their homes when the floodwater

0:55

started to roll it. They had kind of a routine exactly

0:58

with it. But on May thirty first,

1:00

eight eighty nine, a flood of such

1:02

magnitude hit the town that even those

1:04

who were holed up in their homes upper levels

1:07

weren't ready for it. It's been called

1:09

one of the worst disasters in American history,

1:12

and nobody in Johnstown really saw it

1:14

coming. So that's partially because

1:16

there was more to this natural disaster than

1:19

just nature, and that's part of what we're going to take

1:21

a look at today. First, though, we're gonna

1:23

paint a little picture of Johnstown for

1:25

you so you can understand why it

1:27

flooded so frequently in the first place,

1:29

and then just what kind of community it was

1:31

at the time too. So nineteenth

1:33

century Johnstown was a busy

1:36

industrial town in southwestern

1:38

Pennsylvania, and according to an

1:40

article by Amy Lynn Brown in National

1:42

Parks, entrepreneurs had

1:45

not too long before turned it into

1:48

a larger industrial

1:50

sort of production area of steel and iron

1:53

um, and not long before that it

1:56

had just been this small rural community. So

1:58

a real dramatic change for Johnstown,

2:00

and it had a burgeoning working

2:03

class community that lived there too.

2:05

The town itself was kind of hemmed in by

2:07

the Little Conema and the Stony Creek

2:09

rivers, which ran along the edges

2:11

of Johnstown and then merged on the town's

2:14

western end to form the Connema

2:16

River. These rivers flooded the town

2:18

at least once every year, and there were a couple

2:20

of reasons for that, a couple of possible

2:23

I guess instigators for the flooding. Flooding

2:25

causes right. One was snow

2:28

melting and draining from the nearby Allegheny

2:30

Mountains into the rivers in the springtime

2:32

specifically, which would cause the rivers

2:34

to overflow. And then of course

2:37

at any time of year heavy rain

2:39

could also cause flooding flood the river.

2:41

So those were the natural surroundings

2:44

of the town. But there was also a man

2:46

made body of water that was nearby. It was

2:49

fourteen miles up the Little Connuma River,

2:51

and it was called Lake Conuma, although

2:53

I don't think of it as as some sort of natural

2:56

lake. It was originally called the Western

2:58

Reservoir, and it had originally

3:00

been created to supply water

3:03

for the Pennsylvania Canal that went between

3:05

Johnstown and Pittsburgh, but

3:07

the canal system became obsolete

3:10

not long after the reservoir project was

3:12

complete, so not having

3:14

anything to do with this large

3:16

body of water, the reservoir was sold

3:19

and had a few different owners before

3:21

it was finally sold to the South Fork Fishing

3:23

and Hunting Club in eighteen

3:25

seventy nine. The club made this

3:28

former reservoir into a bit

3:30

of a ritzy social

3:32

affair almost it did, uh,

3:34

And it was a organization to

3:37

which many prominent Pennsylvanians belonged,

3:39

including big names like Andrew

3:41

Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and

3:43

Andrew Mellon. And members would go

3:45

to this club to kind of escape

3:47

the industrial environs of Pittsburgh

3:50

and enjoy things like fishing, sailing,

3:52

even musical performances. And

3:54

it was the club that renamed the reservoir

3:57

Lake Knema. Just an important

3:59

not to make here, the dam that kept

4:02

Lake Konuma contained, the South Fork

4:04

Dam was essentially made of packed

4:06

dirt and rocks, and it had not been

4:09

kept up properly for a number

4:11

of years by the time it came into

4:13

the club's possession well, and most disturbingly,

4:16

somebody had even taken out the damn's

4:18

drainage pipes that at some point

4:20

in order to sell them for scraps, So there

4:23

wasn't any way to drain their reservoir

4:25

in order to make repair. So even if you had

4:27

wanted to repair the damn, you would not have been able

4:29

to. According to the Johnstown

4:32

Flood Museum, when the South Fork

4:34

Fishing and Hunting Club took over it

4:36

started maintaining the dam a little bit better,

4:39

but they also made some changes to it that

4:41

made it even less safe. For example,

4:43

they added some screens across the spillway

4:46

to keep the expensive game fish

4:48

that they had stocked the lake with from escaping,

4:50

and this prevented the skill away from draining the lake's

4:53

overflow. They also made the damn

4:55

a couple feet lower so that two carriages

4:57

could pass over it at the same time. So

5:00

this is we've painted a picture of of what the

5:02

situation was like uh in

5:04

May of eighteen eighty nine, and from

5:06

a weather standpoint, that spring

5:09

had been rather unique, according to

5:11

an article by Emily Lorditch and weatherwise,

5:14

a series of storms had led to record

5:17

breaking rainfall that year, So we're

5:19

getting the perfect storm here. As you can tell.

5:22

On May thirty one, the residents

5:24

of Johnstown were experiencing a

5:26

particularly heavy storm and

5:29

Brown rights that rain was falling at a rate

5:31

of an inch per hour and rivers

5:33

were running six to seven ft

5:35

above normal levels. By

5:38

afternoon, the streets in town were

5:40

already flooding, so people were going through their

5:42

their normal routine when there was a flood

5:45

head up to the upper floors, ride

5:47

out the storm, you know, put some of your belongings

5:49

upstairs. Again, just a very

5:52

typical sort of scene for Johnstown.

5:55

What they didn't know is that fourteen miles

5:58

up at Lake Knema, a scene was taken place

6:00

that was entirely unprecedented.

6:03

The depth of the water of the four fifty

6:05

acre lake was sixty ft near

6:07

the dam, and officials at the club

6:09

had been watching that level continued

6:11

to rise during this storm with great

6:14

concern. Of course, the morning of

6:16

May thirty one, they were so worried

6:18

about the dam collapsing that they

6:20

actually started to think about taking

6:23

action. And I mean people in Johnstown,

6:25

just another aside here had sort of known that

6:27

the dam failing and the dam breaking down

6:30

was a possibility because of the condition

6:32

of the dam, and some people even joked about it. And this

6:34

kind of reminds me of when you do live

6:36

in an area where a certain type of natural

6:38

disaster sort of prevalent. Like I remember living on the

6:40

coast and when hurricanes would come,

6:43

there were always people who just sort of didn't really

6:45

take it seriously. Yeah,

6:47

exactly. There's always that contingent of people,

6:49

I think, but in this case,

6:52

When the people at the club saw what was happening,

6:55

they did try to take a few steps, as I said,

6:57

for to keep the dam from failing. They

6:59

for example, added dirt to the top. They

7:02

also dug a second spill away to relieve

7:04

the pressure, and they removed

7:06

the screens that kept the stocked fish from escaping.

7:09

But it was too late. It was too late. At

7:11

this point, nothing they did was able

7:13

to help in At about three pm that day,

7:16

people at the club and in the nearby

7:18

community of South Fork watched

7:21

in shock as the damn quote

7:23

just moved away, sending

7:25

twenty million tons of water barreling

7:28

down the valley. Of course, headed

7:30

right towards Johnstown in just

7:32

a matter of minutes, and according

7:35

to Gene Allen's book Floods,

7:38

the club wasn't completely They

7:40

were trying to take efforts to to save the dam,

7:42

but there was also a warning sent out.

7:45

I mean, a couple of guys had ridden through town earlier

7:47

shouting warnings that the dam was about

7:50

to fail, but people didn't really listen.

7:52

I mean, like you were just talking about there's

7:54

kind of a an almost

7:56

joke like maybe the dam will fail, but

7:58

people didn't really think that was going to happen

8:01

within an hour of the damn failing, though, that

8:03

twenty million tons of water finally did

8:05

reach Johnstown. It was traveling

8:07

at speeds of anywhere from twenty

8:10

to forty miles per hour, and by the time it reached

8:12

the town it was said to have had as much

8:14

force as Niagara Falls, which

8:17

is just a stunning comparison

8:19

to me. When it created a tidal wave too,

8:22

it did. It was a tidal wave of water that

8:24

was forty ft high and carried all

8:26

sorts of debris with it by the time it hit Johnstown,

8:28

including industrial and farm

8:31

debris, houses, barns, animals,

8:33

even people both dead and alive. The

8:36

townspeople were totally blindsided by

8:38

this. Some people only heard a thunder

8:40

like sound as the wave approached. Apparently

8:43

it only took ten minutes basically to wash

8:45

the entire town away. Yeah, and and

8:48

really the entire town was washed

8:50

away. Trains, entire homes

8:52

just swept up in the waves. So of

8:54

course people we were swept up in it

8:56

too. Some of course, drowned

8:58

right away and the flood rushing water. Others

9:01

were killed or injured by the debris

9:04

that was in the water. A lot

9:06

of people, and this is maybe one of the more horrifying

9:08

aspects of the flood. So a lot of people,

9:10

about three hundred to four hundred

9:13

ended up surviving initially

9:15

but then getting swept away by the rushing water

9:17

and getting trapped up against this large

9:19

stone bridge that was owned by the Pennsylvania

9:22

Railroad Company. And this bridge was

9:24

actually blocking a lot of the stuff

9:26

that was rushing through the town, you know, box

9:28

cars, barbed wire, big chunks

9:31

of homes, dead animals,

9:33

creating this this log jam. Essentially,

9:35

all the debris though clogging

9:38

the bridge eventually did catch

9:40

fire and the people trapped against

9:42

the bridge, of course, died

9:44

at that point. Again, just one

9:46

of the most horrifying aspects of this

9:49

already horrifying story. Ultimately,

9:51

though, about two thousand, two hundred

9:54

nine people died in this disaster,

9:56

And just to give you a sense of what those

9:59

numbers mean for a town of Johnstown

10:01

size, it's something like one out

10:03

of every ten people in the

10:05

town. Seven seventy of

10:07

the victims were never identified.

10:10

And the number that Sarah just

10:12

put out about the number of people total

10:14

who died, that included nine entire

10:17

families, six hundred homes,

10:19

were destroyed and seventeen million dollars

10:21

in property damage was done.

10:24

So that was just to give you

10:26

an idea of the toll that this disaster

10:29

took. Some people, however,

10:31

did survive by writing

10:34

out the flood in their homes or in the upper stories

10:36

of other buildings in town. Others

10:38

took a crazy ride down the Connema River

10:41

and were later rescued somewhere downstream,

10:43

which is just wild to me. I

10:45

mean, I know, I just said it's crazy, and then I said it's wild,

10:47

so I said that twice. But I have nothing

10:49

to to add to that. It's it's hard to imagine

10:52

being actually carried alive barns

10:54

then dead animals going

10:57

along with you. But as you can

10:59

imagine, I there of those survival

11:01

scenarios were pretty harrowing,

11:03

and there are fortunately a lot of examples

11:06

though, a lot of records from the flood,

11:08

so we're able to see what it

11:11

was like for people and how they managed to survive.

11:13

And one story that gets retold

11:15

a lot is the story of a six year old girl

11:18

named Gertrude Quinn Slatterly, who

11:20

was swept away by floodwaters

11:22

while she was hanging onto this muddy

11:25

mattress as a kind of raft,

11:27

and as she recalled, she was terrified.

11:30

She was calling out for someone to help her,

11:32

and this man dove into the water

11:34

to to save her. He made his way over

11:36

to her onto the mattress, lifted

11:39

her up, and she later wrote of

11:41

the experience quote, I put

11:43

both arms around his neck and held

11:45

onto him like grim death. Together

11:47

we went down the stream and um

11:51

Miraculously. They eventually reached

11:53

this white building where men were

11:55

leaning out the window trying to nab people as

11:57

they came by, rescuing people. And the

11:59

rest you are through Gertrude

12:02

through the air. Some people later

12:04

said it was as much as fifteen to twenty

12:06

feet through the air uh

12:08

to to safety for the other guys

12:10

to be able to catch her. Another

12:13

woman, Anna fn Maxwell, was in her

12:15

home with her seven children when the flood hit.

12:17

She survived, but unfortunately her

12:19

kids weren't so lucky. The Johnstown

12:21

Flood Museum actually shares how she

12:23

described the scene, and it's pretty sad, she

12:26

said. Quote The water

12:28

rose and floated us until our heads nearly

12:30

touched the ceiling. It was dark and

12:32

the house was tossing every way.

12:35

The air was stifling and I could not

12:37

tell just the moment the rest of the children had

12:39

to give up and drown. What I suffered

12:42

with the bodies of my seven children floating

12:44

around me and the gloom can never be told.

12:47

Yeah. So pretty powerful story.

12:49

And the Johnstown Flood Museum's

12:51

website shares several survival

12:54

stories like this. UM some

12:56

are more uplifting than others.

12:58

Of course, UM in some

13:00

cases too, we should say entire families

13:02

did survive, But it seems like

13:05

you would have had to have been very lucky,

13:07

and all your family members would have had to have been quite

13:09

lucky for that to be the case.

13:11

One thing that is remarkable about the flood,

13:13

though, there relief efforts

13:16

began pretty much immediately, and people

13:18

all over donated clothing and food,

13:21

lumber, medical supplies, money.

13:23

Doctors came to town to to help

13:26

treat the injured. Within five

13:28

days, Clara Barton and her newly

13:30

established American Red Cross we're in

13:32

town. Uh. It was the first peacetime

13:35

disaster that the organization assisted

13:37

in, and they really did a lot. They built warehouses,

13:40

were donated supplies to be stored,

13:43

um hotels for

13:45

for the homeless. Buildings that

13:47

were still standing were repurposed

13:49

into makeshift morgues to avoid

13:52

the spread of disease, all all of that sort of

13:54

stuff. Um, it seems kind

13:56

of unbelievable, but all of these

13:58

recovery efforts seemed who have paid

14:01

off almost immediately. According to

14:03

Brown's article, it only took a month for businesses

14:06

to reopen and only five

14:08

years for the cleanup effort to be completed.

14:12

This wouldn't be the last time, however, that Johnstown

14:14

would have to deal with floods. Even

14:17

though the South Fork Dam was already destroyed, so you would

14:19

think of this big threat is taken

14:21

away, so that's not an issue. But in nineteen

14:23

thirty six, Johnstown was hit with fourteen

14:26

feet of floodwaters caused by heavy rains

14:28

combined with snow runoff. Twenty

14:31

four people died in this case and three thousand

14:33

buildings were damaged or destroyed.

14:36

Then in July nineteen seventy seven, there was

14:38

another flood caused by a line of thunderstorms

14:41

that stalled over the area and also

14:43

the fact that several dams failed contributed

14:46

to this. In this case, five

14:48

people died and there was more than three hundred

14:50

million dollars in property damage, and

14:53

after this third flood, the town's

14:55

economy didn't recover as well as

14:57

it did the first couple of times. Well

14:59

you can imagine, though, Even after that eighteen

15:02

eighty nine flood, there was a lot of discussion

15:04

about who was to blame, because,

15:07

as we've discussed, there was clearly more

15:09

going on than just the natural forces, you

15:11

know, the dam and and its maintenance.

15:13

And many people did blame

15:16

the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for

15:18

not taking more steps to prevent

15:21

the damn failure in the first

15:23

place. Suits were even filed

15:25

against the club, but they never really went

15:27

anywhere. And in discussing

15:30

how the flood of eighteen eighty nine didn't

15:32

have to happen, Brown points

15:34

to general industrialization and

15:36

population growth in the area really

15:39

being to blame. I mean, we talked about that at the beginning

15:41

of the show, how this had not too long before

15:43

turned from a rural, agricultural

15:46

area where some flooding wasn't

15:48

terribly devastating at least, to life

15:50

too of densely populated

15:53

industrial area. She includes

15:55

a couple of quotes to that speak

15:58

really well to this. One is from David the Elah,

16:00

who is a former podcast

16:03

interviewee and he wrote a

16:05

book out. His first book, I think was about

16:07

the Johnstown flood. He said, quote,

16:10

with the valley crowding up the way it was, the

16:12

need for lumber and land was growing apace.

16:15

As a result, more and more timber

16:17

was being stripped off the mountains and near hills,

16:20

and in Johnstown the river channels were being

16:22

narrowed to make room for new buildings where

16:24

the forests were destroyed. Spring thaws

16:26

and summer thunderstorms would send torrents

16:28

racing down the mountain sides. And each

16:31

year the torrents grew worse as the water

16:33

itself tore away at the soil and

16:36

what little groundcover there was left. So

16:38

this kind of helps explain how the

16:40

industrialization of the area would make

16:42

the flooding worst, taking away the natural

16:44

buffers that could have helped alleviate

16:47

natural floods, and then making

16:49

everything worse too. Brown also

16:51

quotes Megan Omalley, who is the chief

16:54

of interpretation at the Johnstown Flood

16:56

National Memorial, and she

16:58

says, quote, we call the flood a natural

17:01

disaster, but it was a disaster that occurred

17:03

from a combination of natural events

17:06

and human manipulation of the environment.

17:08

We see that happened over and over

17:10

in human history. We create

17:12

preconditions for disaster, and

17:14

then disaster occurs. And

17:17

I know similar arguments are often made about

17:19

more recent natural disasters.

17:21

I mean, you see it pretty much every

17:24

time there's a natural disaster, maybe with

17:26

the exception of tornadoes, because I think everybody

17:28

understands there's not a whole lot you can do

17:30

about that, but earthquakes, hurricanes, floods,

17:33

every time you'll see a discussion

17:36

that that's similar to that one. Um.

17:39

I guess it's just the way of the world. Yes,

17:41

Well, not to end on to depressing

17:44

a note, we do have some listener mail

17:46

to share that might be a little bit more uplifting.

17:48

But before we get to that, Okay,

17:53

de Bleina, what do we have for listener mail today?

17:56

Well, we have a couple of emails.

17:58

One is from list in her Claire

18:01

and she soon as this cool

18:03

little song that her teacher taught

18:06

her in middle school about

18:08

the lost colony of Roanoke. Do

18:11

you want me to tell it to you? I would like to hear this song.

18:14

It goes ro ro Roanoke,

18:16

the lost colony. Where did all the people

18:19

go? It's a mystery. I don't

18:21

know what the tune is supposed to be. I

18:23

mean, Claire, if you're listening, send us the two work

18:26

with ro Ro your boat. I don't know. At first,

18:28

that's what I thought, but I can't make it

18:30

work. You take a look. I

18:32

don't know. Well,

18:35

maybe we'll practice after this we

18:37

can find a tune that fit um.

18:40

But thank you Claire for sharing.

18:42

We always like things like that little song. Our

18:45

second email is from listener Kelly,

18:47

and she wrote to say I just wanted

18:49

to say I love the first portion of the

18:52

Chevalier Dale podcast. Actually,

18:54

currently the second part has not even come

18:56

out as of this recording. She went

18:59

on to say, I'm currently living in London and

19:01

one of the greatest things about residing here

19:03

is how easy it is to go see major

19:05

historical exhibition. So after

19:07

listening to the first installment of the Chevalier

19:10

podcast, it was exciting to travel

19:12

fifteen minutes by tube and be standing

19:14

in front of the Chevalier's portrait at

19:17

the National Portrait Gallery. However,

19:19

I will say that I don't understand why everyone

19:21

was so surprised when they found that the

19:23

portrait was of a man in woman's clothing

19:26

rather than a woman, it definitely

19:28

looks like a man. That's kind of our assess too,

19:31

So thank you Kelly for writing in. I'm

19:33

glad that somebody heard that podcast

19:35

and then rushed out right away to go see

19:37

the the Chevalier in person. Yeah,

19:40

I like that very proactive.

19:43

Well, if any of you have gone out

19:45

to check on some of our

19:48

podcast details in person, or maybe

19:50

you just want to share some ideas with us or some

19:52

comments one of recent podcasts songs,

19:54

and please include the tunes so you can sing

19:56

them. It's gotta

19:59

be ro road or your but I was

20:01

just maybe I wanted an excuse not to have to actually

20:03

sing it if people listen to my poor

20:05

singing skills. But either way, right

20:07

to us. We're History podcast at Discovery

20:10

dot com or you can look us up on Facebook. We're

20:12

also on Twitter at Missed Industry, and

20:14

we have a lot of natural disaster

20:17

content, don't we do. We actually

20:19

have how floods work, So if

20:21

anyone would like to learn a little bit more about

20:24

what we talked about on this podcast, you

20:26

can find that article by visiting our homepage

20:28

at www dot how Stuff works

20:31

dot com

20:35

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