The remarkable stories that have been told about people floating a mile up the river and then back two or three times are easily credible after seeing the evidences of the strange course the flood took in this part of the town. People who stood near the ruins of Poplar Bridge saw four women on a roof float up on the stream, turn a short distance above and come back and go past again and once more return. Then they went far down on the current to the lower part of the town and were rescued as they passed the second story window of a school house. A man who was imprisoned in the attic of his house put his wife and two children on a roof that was eddying past and stayed behind to die alone. They floated up the stream and then back and got upon the roof of the very house they had left, and the whole family was saved.
At Grubbtown there is a house that came all the way from Woodvale. On it was a man who lived near Grubbtown, but was working at Woodvale when the flood came. He was carried right past his own house and coolly told the people at the bridge to bid his wife good-bye for him. The house passed the bridge three times, the man carrying on a conversation with the people on shore and giving directions for his burial if his body should be found. The third time the house went up it grounded at Grubbtown, and in an hour or two the man was safe at home. Three girls who went by on a roof crawled into the branches of a tree and had to stay there all night before they could make any one understand where they were. At one time scores of floating houses were wedged in together near the ruins of Poplar street bridge. Four brave men went out from the shore, and, stepping from house roof to house roof, brought in twelve women and children.
Starvation Overcomes Modesty.
Some women crawled from roofs into the attics of houses. In their struggles with the flood most of their clothes had been torn from them, and rather than appear on the streets they stayed where they were until hunger forced them to shout out of the windows for help. At this stage of the flood more persons were lost by being crushed to death than by drowning. As they floated by on roofs or doors the toppling houses fell over upon them and killed them.
Nineveh was Spared.
The valley of death, twenty-three miles long, practically ends at Nineveh. It begins at Woodvale, where the dam broke, and for the entire distance to this point the mountains make a canyon—a water trap, from which escape was impossible. The first intimation this city had of the impending destruction was at noon on Friday, when Station Agent Nunamaker got this despatch:—
"We just received word from South Fork that water is coming over dam at Conemaugh Lake, and is liable to burst at any moment. Notify people to look out."
"J.C. Waukemshaw,
Despatcher at Conemaugh."
Nunamaker started on a dead run to the water front, along which most of the houses are situated, crying:—