Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from housework
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Debline
Speaker 1: and chocolate Boarding. And And depending on where you live,
Speaker 1: you've probably gotten used to the threat of a particular
Speaker 1: type of natural disaster. I remember where I grew up,
Speaker 1: it was always tornadoes that people were afraid of and
Speaker 1: that came through the area a lot. And when I
Speaker 1: lived on the Gulf Coast, it was hurricanes, of course.
Speaker 1: And for the thirty thousand people who lived in Johnstown,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania in eight nine, what they had gotten used to
Speaker 1: dealing with was floods. Yeah. Located in a floodplain at
Speaker 1: the confluence of two rivers, Johnstown flooded really frequently, so
Speaker 1: it was pretty common to see water in the streets,
Speaker 1: and locals had gotten used to moving their valuables and
Speaker 1: themselves to the upper floors of their homes when the
Speaker 1: floodwater started to roll it. They had kind of a
Speaker 1: routine exactly with it. But on May thirty first, eight
Speaker 1: eighty nine, a flood of such magnitude hit the town
Speaker 1: that even those who were holed up in their homes
Speaker 1: upper levels weren't ready for it. It's been called one
Speaker 1: of the worst disasters in American history, and nobody in
Speaker 1: Johnstown really saw it coming. So that's partially because there
Speaker 1: was more to this natural disaster than just nature, and
Speaker 1: that's part of what we're going to take a look
Speaker 1: at today. First, though, we're gonna paint a little picture
Speaker 1: of Johnstown for you so you can understand why it
Speaker 1: flooded so frequently in the first place, and then just
Speaker 1: what kind of community it was at the time too.
Speaker 1: So nineteenth century Johnstown was a busy industrial town in
Speaker 1: southwestern Pennsylvania, and according to an article by Amy Lynn
Speaker 1: Brown in National Parks, entrepreneurs had not too long before
Speaker 1: turned it into a larger industrial sort of production area
Speaker 1: of steel and iron um, and not long before that
Speaker 1: it had just been this small rural community. So a
Speaker 1: real dramatic change for Johnstown, and it had a burgeoning
Speaker 1: working class community that lived there too. The town itself
Speaker 1: was kind of hemmed in by the Little Conema and
Speaker 1: the Stony Creek rivers, which ran along the edges of
Speaker 1: Johnstown and then merged on the town's western end to
Speaker 1: form the Connema River. These rivers flooded the town at
Speaker 1: least once every year, and there were a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons for that, a couple of possible I guess instigators
Speaker 1: for the flooding. Flooding causes right. One was snow melting
Speaker 1: and draining from the nearby Allegheny Mountains into the rivers
Speaker 1: in the springtime specifically, which would cause the rivers to overflow.
Speaker 1: And then of course at any time of year heavy
Speaker 1: rain could also cause flooding flood the river. So those
Speaker 1: were the natural surroundings of the town. But there was
Speaker 1: also a man made body of water that was nearby.
Speaker 1: It was fourteen miles up the Little Connuma River, and
Speaker 1: it was called Lake Conuma, although I don't think of
Speaker 1: it as as some sort of natural lake. It was
Speaker 1: originally called the Western Reservoir, and it had originally been
Speaker 1: created to supply water for the Pennsylvania Canal that went
Speaker 1: between Johnstown and Pittsburgh, but the canal system became obsolete
Speaker 1: not long after the reservoir project was complete, so not
Speaker 1: having anything to do with this large body of water,
Speaker 1: the reservoir was sold and had a few different owners
Speaker 1: before it was finally sold to the South Fork Fishing
Speaker 1: and Hunting Club in eighteen seventy nine. The club made
Speaker 1: this former reservoir into a bit of a ritzy social
Speaker 1: affair almost it did, uh, And it was a organization
Speaker 1: to which many prominent Pennsylvanians belonged, including big names like
Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. And members
Speaker 1: would go to this club to kind of escape the
Speaker 1: industrial environs of Pittsburgh and enjoy things like fishing, sailing,
Speaker 1: even musical performances. And it was the club that renamed
Speaker 1: the reservoir Lake Knema. Just an important not to make here,
Speaker 1: the dam that kept Lake Konuma contained, the South Fork
Speaker 1: Dam was essentially made of packed dirt and rocks, and
Speaker 1: it had not been kept up properly for a number
Speaker 1: of years by the time it came into the club's
Speaker 1: possession well, and most disturbingly, somebody had even taken out
Speaker 1: the damn's drainage pipes that at some point in order
Speaker 1: to sell them for scraps, So there wasn't any way
Speaker 1: to drain their reservoir in order to make repair. So
Speaker 1: even if you had wanted to repair the damn, you
Speaker 1: would not have been able to. According to the Johnstown
Speaker 1: Flood Museum, when the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club
Speaker 1: took over it started maintaining the dam a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but they also made some changes to it that made
Speaker 1: it even less safe. For example, they added some screens
Speaker 1: across the spillway to keep the expensive game fish that
Speaker 1: they had stocked the lake with from escaping, and this
Speaker 1: prevented the skill away from draining the lake's overflow. They
Speaker 1: also made the damn a couple feet lower so that
Speaker 1: two carriages could pass over it at the same time.
Speaker 1: So this is we've painted a picture of of what
Speaker 1: the situation was like uh in May of eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and from a weather standpoint, that spring had been rather unique,
Speaker 1: according to an article by Emily Lorditch and weatherwise, a
Speaker 1: series of storms had led to record breaking rainfall that year,
Speaker 1: So we're getting the perfect storm here. As you can tell.
Speaker 1: On May thirty one, the residents of Johnstown were experiencing
Speaker 1: a particularly heavy storm and Brown rights that rain was
Speaker 1: falling at a rate of an inch per hour and
Speaker 1: rivers were running six to seven ft above normal levels.
Speaker 1: By afternoon, the streets in town were already flooding, so
Speaker 1: people were going through their their normal routine when there
Speaker 1: was a flood head up to the upper floors, ride
Speaker 1: out the storm, you know, put some of your belongings upstairs. Again,
Speaker 1: just a very typical sort of scene for Johnstown. What
Speaker 1: they didn't know is that fourteen miles up at Lake Knema,
Speaker 1: a scene was taken place that was entirely unprecedented. The
Speaker 1: depth of the water of the four fifty acre lake
Speaker 1: was sixty ft near the dam, and officials at the
Speaker 1: club had been watching that level continued to rise during
Speaker 1: this storm with great concern. Of course, the morning of
Speaker 1: May thirty one, they were so worried about the dam
Speaker 1: collapsing that they actually started to think about taking action.
Speaker 1: And I mean people in Johnstown, just another aside here
Speaker 1: had sort of known that the dam failing and the
Speaker 1: dam breaking down was a possibility because of the condition
Speaker 1: of the dam, and some people even joked about it.
Speaker 1: And this kind of reminds me of when you do
Speaker 1: live in an area where a certain type of natural
Speaker 1: disaster sort of prevalent. Like I remember living on the
Speaker 1: coast and when hurricanes would come, there were always people
Speaker 1: who just sort of didn't really take it seriously. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: There's always that contingent of people, I think, but in
Speaker 1: this case, When the people at the club saw what
Speaker 1: was happening, they did try to take a few steps,
Speaker 1: as I said, for to keep the dam from failing.
Speaker 1: They for example, added dirt to the top. They also
Speaker 1: dug a second spill away to relieve the pressure, and
Speaker 1: they removed the screens that kept the stocked fish from escaping.
Speaker 1: But it was too late. It was too late. At
Speaker 1: this point, nothing they did was able to help in
Speaker 1: At about three pm that day, people at the club
Speaker 1: and in the nearby community of South Fork watched in
Speaker 1: shock as the damn quote just moved away, sending twenty
Speaker 1: million tons of water barreling down the valley. Of course,
Speaker 1: headed right towards Johnstown in just a matter of minutes,
Speaker 1: and according to Gene Allen's book Floods, the club wasn't
Speaker 1: completely They were trying to take efforts to to save
Speaker 1: the dam, but there was also a warning sent out.
Speaker 1: I mean, a couple of guys had ridden through town
Speaker 1: earlier shouting warnings that the dam was about to fail,
Speaker 1: but people didn't really listen. I mean, like you were
Speaker 1: just talking about there's kind of a an almost joke
Speaker 1: like maybe the dam will fail, but people didn't really
Speaker 1: think that was going to happen within an hour of
Speaker 1: the damn failing, though, that twenty million tons of water
Speaker 1: finally did reach Johnstown. It was traveling at speeds of
Speaker 1: anywhere from twenty to forty miles per hour, and by
Speaker 1: the time it reached the town it was said to
Speaker 1: have had as much force as Niagara Falls, which is
Speaker 1: just a stunning comparison to me. When it created a
Speaker 1: tidal wave too, it did. It was a tidal wave
Speaker 1: of water that was forty ft high and carried all
Speaker 1: sorts of debris with it by the time it hit Johnstown,
Speaker 1: including industrial and farm debris, houses, barns, animals, even people
Speaker 1: both dead and alive. The townspeople were totally blindsided by this.
Speaker 1: Some people only heard a thunder like sound as the
Speaker 1: wave approached. Apparently it only took ten minutes basically to
Speaker 1: wash the entire town away. Yeah, and and really the
Speaker 1: entire town was washed away. Trains, entire homes just swept
Speaker 1: up in the waves. So of course people we were
Speaker 1: swept up in it too. Some of course, drowned right
Speaker 1: away and the flood rushing water. Others were killed or
Speaker 1: injured by the debris that was in the water. A
Speaker 1: lot of people, and this is maybe one of the
Speaker 1: more horrifying aspects of the flood. So a lot of people,
Speaker 1: about three hundred to four hundred ended up surviving initially
Speaker 1: but then getting swept away by the rushing water and
Speaker 1: getting trapped up against this large stone bridge that was
Speaker 1: owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. And this bridge was
Speaker 1: actually blocking a lot of the stuff that was rushing
Speaker 1: through the town, you know, box cars, barbed wire, big
Speaker 1: chunks of homes, dead animals, creating this this log jam. Essentially,
Speaker 1: all the debris though clogging the bridge eventually did catch
Speaker 1: fire and the people trapped against the bridge, of course,
Speaker 1: died at that point. Again, just one of the most
Speaker 1: horrifying aspects of this already horrifying story. Ultimately, though, about
Speaker 1: two thousand, two hundred nine people died in this disaster,
Speaker 1: And just to give you a sense of what those
Speaker 1: numbers mean for a town of Johnstown size, it's something
Speaker 1: like one out of every ten people in the town.
Speaker 1: Seven seventy of the victims were never identified. And the
Speaker 1: number that Sarah just put out about the number of
Speaker 1: people total who died, that included nine entire families, six
Speaker 1: hundred homes, were destroyed and seventeen million dollars in property
Speaker 1: damage was done. So that was just to give you
Speaker 1: an idea of the toll that this disaster took. Some people, however,
Speaker 1: did survive by writing out the flood in their homes
Speaker 1: or in the upper stories of other buildings in town.
Speaker 1: Others took a crazy ride down the Connema River and
Speaker 1: were later rescued somewhere downstream, which is just wild to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I just said it's crazy, and
Speaker 1: then I said it's wild, so I said that twice.
Speaker 1: But I have nothing to to add to that. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine being actually carried alive barns then
Speaker 1: dead animals going along with you. But as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: I there of those survival scenarios were pretty harrowing, and
Speaker 1: there are fortunately a lot of examples though, a lot
Speaker 1: of records from the flood, so we're able to see
Speaker 1: what it was like for people and how they managed
Speaker 1: to survive. And one story that gets retold a lot
Speaker 1: is the story of a six year old girl named
Speaker 1: Gertrude Quinn Slatterly, who was swept away by floodwaters while
Speaker 1: she was hanging onto this muddy mattress as a kind
Speaker 1: of raft, and as she recalled, she was terrified. She
Speaker 1: was calling out for someone to help her, and this
Speaker 1: man dove into the water to to save her. He
Speaker 1: made his way over to her onto the mattress, lifted
Speaker 1: her up, and she later wrote of the experience quote,
Speaker 1: I put both arms around his neck and held onto
Speaker 1: him like grim death. Together we went down the stream
Speaker 1: and um Miraculously. They eventually reached this white building where
Speaker 1: men were leaning out the window trying to nab people
Speaker 1: as they came by, rescuing people. And the rest you
Speaker 1: are through Gertrude through the air. Some people later said
Speaker 1: it was as much as fifteen to twenty feet through
Speaker 1: the air uh to to safety for the other guys
Speaker 1: to be able to catch her. Another woman, Anna fn Maxwell,
Speaker 1: was in her home with her seven children when the
Speaker 1: flood hit. She survived, but unfortunately her kids weren't so lucky.
Speaker 1: The Johnstown Flood Museum actually shares how she described the scene,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty sad, she said. Quote The water rose
Speaker 1: and floated us until our heads nearly touched the ceiling.
Speaker 1: It was dark and the house was tossing every way.
Speaker 1: The air was stifling and I could not tell just
Speaker 1: the moment the rest of the children had to give
Speaker 1: up and drown. What I suffered with the bodies of
Speaker 1: my seven children floating around me and the gloom can
Speaker 1: never be told. Yeah. So pretty powerful story. And the
Speaker 1: Johnstown Flood Museum's website shares several survival stories like this.
Speaker 1: UM some are more uplifting than others. Of course, UM
Speaker 1: in some cases too, we should say entire families did survive,
Speaker 1: But it seems like you would have had to have
Speaker 1: been very lucky, and all your family members would have
Speaker 1: had to have been quite lucky for that to be
Speaker 1: the case. One thing that is remarkable about the flood, though,
Speaker 1: there relief efforts began pretty much immediately, and people all
Speaker 1: over donated clothing and food, lumber, medical supplies, money. Doctors
Speaker 1: came to town to to help treat the injured. Within
Speaker 1: five days, Clara Barton and her newly established American Red
Speaker 1: Cross we're in town. Uh. It was the first peacetime
Speaker 1: disaster that the organization assisted in, and they really did
Speaker 1: a lot. They built warehouses, were donated supplies to be stored,
Speaker 1: um hotels for for the homeless. Buildings that were still
Speaker 1: standing were repurposed into makeshift morgues to avoid the spread
Speaker 1: of disease, all all of that sort of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems kind of unbelievable, but all of these recovery
Speaker 1: efforts seemed who have paid off almost immediately. According to
Speaker 1: Brown's article, it only took a month for businesses to
Speaker 1: reopen and only five years for the cleanup effort to
Speaker 1: be completed. This wouldn't be the last time, however, that
Speaker 1: Johnstown would have to deal with floods. Even though the
Speaker 1: South Fork Dam was already destroyed, so you would think
Speaker 1: of this big threat is taken away, so that's not
Speaker 1: an issue. But in nineteen thirty six, Johnstown was hit
Speaker 1: with fourteen feet of floodwaters caused by heavy rains combined
Speaker 1: with snow runoff. Twenty four people died in this case
Speaker 1: and three thousand buildings were damaged or destroyed. Then in
Speaker 1: July nineteen seventy seven, there was another flood caused by
Speaker 1: a line of thunderstorms that stalled over the area and
Speaker 1: also the fact that several dams failed contributed to this.
Speaker 1: In this case, five people died and there was more
Speaker 1: than three hundred million dollars in property damage, and after
Speaker 1: this third flood, the town's economy didn't recover as well
Speaker 1: as it did the first couple of times. Well you
Speaker 1: can imagine, though, Even after that eighteen eighty nine flood,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of discussion about who was to blame, because,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, there was clearly more going on than
Speaker 1: just the natural forces, you know, the dam and and
Speaker 1: its maintenance. And many people did blame the South Fork
Speaker 1: Fishing and Hunting Club for not taking more steps to
Speaker 1: prevent the damn failure in the first place. Suits were
Speaker 1: even filed against the club, but they never really went anywhere.
Speaker 1: And in discussing how the flood of eighteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: didn't have to happen, Brown points to general industrialization and
Speaker 1: population growth in the area really being to blame. I mean,
Speaker 1: we talked about that at the beginning of the show,
Speaker 1: how this had not too long before turned from a rural,
Speaker 1: agricultural area where some flooding wasn't terribly devastating at least,
Speaker 1: to life too of densely populated industrial area. She includes
Speaker 1: a couple of quotes to that speak really well to this.
Speaker 1: One is from David the Elah, who is a former
Speaker 1: podcast interviewee and he wrote a book out. His first book,
Speaker 1: I think was about the Johnstown flood. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: with the valley crowding up the way it was, the
Speaker 1: need for lumber and land was growing apace. As a result,
Speaker 1: more and more timber was being stripped off the mountains
Speaker 1: and near hills, and in Johnstown the river channels were
Speaker 1: being narrowed to make room for new buildings where the
Speaker 1: forests were destroyed. Spring thaws and summer thunderstorms would send
Speaker 1: torrents racing down the mountain sides. And each year the
Speaker 1: torrents grew worse as the water itself tore away at
Speaker 1: the soil and what little groundcover there was left. So
Speaker 1: this kind of helps explain how the industrialization of the
Speaker 1: area would make the flooding worst, taking away the natural
Speaker 1: buffers that could have helped alleviate natural floods, and then
Speaker 1: making everything worse too. Brown also quotes Megan Omalley, who
Speaker 1: is the chief of interpretation at the Johnstown Flood National Memorial,
Speaker 1: and she says, quote, we call the flood a natural disaster,
Speaker 1: but it was a disaster that occurred from a combination
Speaker 1: of natural events and human manipulation of the environment. We
Speaker 1: see that happened over and over in human history. We
Speaker 1: create preconditions for disaster, and then disaster occurs. And I
Speaker 1: know similar arguments are often made about more recent natural disasters.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see it pretty much every time there's
Speaker 1: a natural disaster, maybe with the exception of tornadoes, because
Speaker 1: I think everybody understands there's not a whole lot you
Speaker 1: can do about that, but earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, every time
Speaker 1: you'll see a discussion that that's similar to that one. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess it's just the way of the world. Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: not to end on to depressing a note, we do
Speaker 1: have some listener mail to share that might be a
Speaker 1: little bit more uplifting. But before we get to that, Okay,
Speaker 1: de Bleina, what do we have for listener mail today? Well,
Speaker 1: we have a couple of emails. One is from list
Speaker 1: in her Claire and she soon as this cool little
Speaker 1: song that her teacher taught her in middle school about
Speaker 1: the lost colony of Roanoke. Do you want me to
Speaker 1: tell it to you? I would like to hear this song.
Speaker 1: It goes ro ro Roanoke, the lost colony. Where did
Speaker 1: all the people go? It's a mystery. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the tune is supposed to be. I mean, Claire,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, send us the two work with ro
Speaker 1: Ro your boat. I don't know. At first, that's what
Speaker 1: I thought, but I can't make it work. You take
Speaker 1: a look. I don't know. Well, maybe we'll practice after
Speaker 1: this we can find a tune that fit um. But
Speaker 1: thank you Claire for sharing. We always like things like
Speaker 1: that little song. Our second email is from listener Kelly,
Speaker 1: and she wrote to say I just wanted to say
Speaker 1: I love the first portion of the Chevalier Dale podcast. Actually,
Speaker 1: currently the second part has not even come out as
Speaker 1: of this recording. She went on to say, I'm currently
Speaker 1: living in London and one of the greatest things about
Speaker 1: residing here is how easy it is to go see
Speaker 1: major historical exhibition. So after listening to the first installment
Speaker 1: of the Chevalier podcast, it was exciting to travel fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes by tube and be standing in front of the
Speaker 1: Chevalier's portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. However, I will
Speaker 1: say that I don't understand why everyone was so surprised
Speaker 1: when they found that the portrait was of a man
Speaker 1: in woman's clothing rather than a woman, it definitely looks
Speaker 1: like a man. That's kind of our assess too, So
Speaker 1: thank you Kelly for writing in. I'm glad that somebody
Speaker 1: heard that podcast and then rushed out right away to
Speaker 1: go see the the Chevalier in person. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: that very proactive. Well, if any of you have gone
Speaker 1: out to check on some of our podcast details in person,
Speaker 1: or maybe you just want to share some ideas with
Speaker 1: us or some comments one of recent podcasts songs, and
Speaker 1: please include the tunes so you can sing them. It's
Speaker 1: gotta be ro road or your but I was just
Speaker 1: maybe I wanted an excuse not to have to actually
Speaker 1: sing it if people listen to my poor singing skills.
Speaker 1: But either way, right to us. We're History podcast at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com or you can look us up on Facebook.
Speaker 1: We're also on Twitter at Missed Industry, and we have
Speaker 1: a lot of natural disaster content, don't we do. We
Speaker 1: actually have how floods work, So if anyone would like
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more about what we talked
Speaker 1: about on this podcast, you can find that article by
Speaker 1: visiting our homepage at www dot how Stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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