Johnstown Flood A Mountain Tsunami
On Memorial Day of 1889, western Pennsylvania was caught by a massive storm,
unprecedented in the state's history. Heavy rains brought the South Fork dam
above the city of Johnstown to the brink of collapse. When the structure finally gave in,
a 12-meter high (40 ft) wall of water rushed down from the mountain. To the horror of all residents,
their entire town was swallowed by water in just a couple of minutes.
After 24 hours of heavy rainfall, South Fork Dam, an earthwork dam on the Little Conemaugh River,
collapsed and released around 14.5 million tons of water. As a result, a giant torrent of water
equivalent to the power of Niagara Falls rushed down the gorge destroying everything in its path.
The flood wave finally reached Johnstown, a small industrial city. Less than half an hour after the
dam broke, the entire town was submerged, causing more than 2,000 inhabitants to lose their lives.
The catastrophe was named one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States.
However, a question looms whether nature was the only culprit for the tragedy.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Johnstown was a small, thriving, industrial town. It was
built in the 1800 but began to develop only when the canal and the railroad system reached
western Pennsylvania in the first half of the 19th century. The area was rich in iron ore, allowing
the opening of the Cambria Iron Works. The rise of industry in the town meant the arrival of new
inhabitants, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Johnstown had around 30,000 citizens.
The town's prosperity was closely related to the work of the steel mill. The canal was a town’s
lifeline. It connected it with the Atlantic coast and, more importantly, Pittsburg, the
steel industry center. To maintain the water level in the canal between Johnstown and Blairsville,
part of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, an earthwork dam was built
23 kilometers (14 miles) upstream of Johnstown. The South Fork Dam was built between 1838
and 1853. When finished, it was the largest earthwork dam in the world.
It was 284 meters (931 ft) long and 22 meters (72 ft) high. The dam's upstream side was built of
puddled earth and clay and covered with a layer of slate. The slope was finished with a layer
of dressed masonry stones. The downstream side of the dam was a heavy rip rap. On the bottom,
there was a stone masonry culvert with a discharge chamber inside in case of a high water level.
A year after the dam was finished, the Pennsylvania Railroad completed the tracks
through the mountains and doomed the canal to become redundant. Four years after the dam was
completed, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sold the entire canal system to Pennsylvania Railroad.
The South Fork Dam Reservoir lost its initial purpose. A group of investors,
wealthy men from Pittsburg, got the idea to turn the lake into a resort. In 1879,
they bought the reservoir from the Pennsylvania Railroad. Investors formed the South Fork Fishing
and Hunting Club, renamed the reservoir into Lake Conemaugh and filled it with fish. The lake was to
become a fishing and hunting resort. A clubhouse was built along with summer houses, boathouses,
stables, and other amenities. They also modified the dam to meet the needs of the resort.
Pipes from the discharge chamber were removed, and the culvert was clogged.
The top of the dam was cut off to make the road wide enough for two carriages to pass. A bridge
was built over the spillway, which was closed with a steel net to prevent fish from leaving the lake.
Several heavy floods hit the Johnstown area in the years following the remodeling.
With each surge, a rumor flew that the dam was about to collapse. Since it never happened, the
people began to ignore such warnings. The truth was that the dam had leaked on each occasion.
Its owners were repairing it every time using only mud and straw. Then the 1889 flood occurred.
On May 30, 1889, 15 to 25 centimeters (6 to 10 in) of rain fell over the region. It
was a rainfall that the inhabitants of Johnstown had never witnessed.
By the end of the day, the town was flooded, but no one paid particular attention to it.
People in Johnstown got used to flooding when there was heavy rainfall.
The president and the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club manager, Colonel Elias J. Unger,
had more reasons to be concerned. At 7 A.M., the level of water in Lake Conemaugh
was only 60 centimeters (2 ft) below the crest. The upper part of the lake was filled with logs
and other debris. The water rose with each hour and threatened to overcome the dam.
With the help of a young engineer, John G. Parke, Jr., Colonel Unger tried to raise the dam's height
by creating a ridge on top of it. At the west side of the dam, people were trying to cut a
new spillway and allow the water from the lake to pour out. Because of the rocky ground, they
only managed to dig a knee-deep and two feet wide trench, definitively not enough to make a change.
Colonel Unger refused to remove the steel net from the spillway as he didn’t want to lose the fish.
And so, the disaster became inevitable. By 2.00 P.M. water was running over the central part,
which was the weakest point of the entire dam. At 2.55 P.M., the center section of the dam
gave way to the overflowing lake. It took only one hour for the entire lake to drain into the valley.
14.5 million tons of water gushed down the winding gorge that led to Johnstown.
The 12-meter high wall (40 ft) of water and debris destroyed everything in its path.
The first village hit by the flood was South Fork. Warned about the threat of the dam collapsing,
most of its inhabitants ran to higher ground. After the wave passed South Fork,
it hit the Conemaugh Viaduct, a 24-meter (78 ft) high railroad bridge. Debris carried by the
flood jammed at the viaduct arks, stopping the water for a moment. However, it took only seven
minutes for the viaduct to give in. Because a significant amount of water and debris
built up at the viaduct, the flood continued down the valley with even greater ferocity.
Before it hit Johnstown, the flood wiped out the villages of Mineral Point and East Conemaugh, and
the Cambria Iron Works factory. A wave traveling at speeds of 64 kilometers per hour (40 mph),
carried railroad tracks, dozens of locomotives and passenger cars, more than a hundred houses,
human and animal bodies, miles of barbed wire from the steel mill, and hundreds of trees.
Exactly 57 minutes after the South Fork Dam collapsed,
the flood reached Johnstown. Most residents were caught by surprise and not prepared to escape.
The flood hit the town with enormous force. Buildings washed away as if they were matchboxes.
A massive torrent of water and debris swallowed the town in just 10 minutes.
Many people were crushed by the debris, and others became caught in barbed wire and drowned.
Those who survived the impact were found riding on roofs of their houses,
screaming in agony, and unable to resist the might of the water running through their town.
The flood stopped only when it hit the massive stone-arched Pennsylvania Railroad bridge.
Because the bridge was built at an angle and protected by the riverbed curve, it withheld
the flood. A gigantic pile of debris created a dam at the bridge. Hundreds of people who had
washed downstream became trapped in the rubble, struggling to get out. For some of them, it took
hours to free themselves. Some failed to get out at all. Their agony got worse when the pile
caught on fire around midnight. The fire lasted three days and took at least 80 additional lives.
On June 1, survivors began to gather in what was left of Johnstown. Roads and railroads
were destroyed, telegraph lines were cut, there was no water or food in the town.
Survivors organized search and rescue parties to save the people trapped in the rubble.
They also formed committees to establish morgues and temporary hospitals, remove dead bodies,
and find supplies. However, it took months to establish the count of the deceased.
The final death toll was 2,208 people, of which 396 were children.
There wasn’t a family in the town that hadn’t lost at least one of its members.
Ninety-eight children were left orphans, and 99 whole families perished.
On June 2, the weather began to improve. The water was withdrawing, and the fire was being
extinguished. Once the water settled, a colossal debris field at the stone bridge remained,
covering the area of 12 hectares (30 acres) and going up to 21 meters (70ft) in height.
The debris comprising mud, trees, steel elements, and miles of barbed wire was impossible to remove.
An explosive expert had to be hired to destroy the pile using dynamite.
One thousand workers were engaged for the task that lasted for several months.
At the same time, the American Society of Civil Engineers appointed
a committee of four prominent engineers to investigate the cause of the disaster.
After making all necessary inspections, they issued a report claiming the South Fork dam would
have failed even if it wasn’t for alterations made by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.
Controversially, details of the report were not disclosed to the public for two years
as surveyors did “not want to become involved in any litigation.”
To the people of Johnstown, it was apparent the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was
to blame for the disaster. They accused them of damaging the dam and of improper maintenance.
Four different lawsuits were filed against the Club and its members,
but the court found none of them responsible for what happened. It was an Act of God,
and therefore, not the Club nor its members could be blamed for the death of over 2,000 people
and the destruction of three towns across 10 square kilometers (4 square miles). More
importantly, survivors were denied the possibility of legal compensation.
The total damage was estimated to be $17 million - roughly $500 million adjusted for inflation.
Contrary to official investigation reports and court decisions,
a hydraulic analysis published in 2016 confirmed what had long been suspected:
part of the blame for the dam’s collapse was to be put on the Club.
The changes made to the dam severely reduced its ability to withstand major storms like the one in
1889. The club owners had lowered the total height of the dam by as much as 90 centimeters (3ft) and
set up the steel net that resulted in a much lower capacity of the main spillway. They also clogged
the discharge chamber, and failed to replace the discharge pipes at the dam's base. These actions
cut in half the discharge capacity of the dam. In the end, improper and insufficient repairs
conducted in 1880 reduced the dam's strength and capability to withhold a large amount of water.
In the aftermath of the flood, people from Pennsylvania and the entire nation mobilized
to help those who lost everything. Pennsylvania Railroad restored the traffic to Pittsburg
within two days, allowing the help to arrive. Thousands of workers gathered in Johnstown to
remove the debris, distribute food and other supplies, and provide medical care to injured and
shelter for those who lost their homes. The first helper to arrive in Johnstown was Clara Barton,
the founder of the American Red Cross. She remained in the town for a full five months.
Across the nation and from abroad, over 3.7 million dollars in contributions were gathered
for the relief effort - about $100 million in today’s money. The public in the United States was
deeply touched by the tragedy people of Johnstown suffered. Yet, at the same time, they were furious
with the injustice and the fact that no one was to be held responsible for the dam's collapse.
As a result of the public criticism, state legislatures adopted the Rylands
versus Fletcher precedent, which “held that a non-negligent defendant could be held liable
for damage caused by the unnatural use of land.” In the century to come, Johnstown suffered five
more floods. The worst were those in 1936 and 1977, which took 25 and 88 lives, respectively.
However, neither was similar to the disastrous 1889 Flood - a Mountain Tsunami.
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