CHAPTER XVII.
One Week After the Great Disaster.
By slow degrees and painful labor the barren place where Johnstown stood begins again to look a little like the habitations of a civilized community. Daily a little is added to the cleared space once filled with the concrete rubbish of this town, daily the number of willing workers who are helping the town to rise again increases. To-day the great yellow plain which was filled with the best business blocks and residences before the flood is covered with tents for soldiers and laborers and gangs of men at work. The wrecks are being removed or burned up. Those houses which were left only partially destroyed are beginning to be repaired. Still, it will be months, very likely years, before the pathway of the flood ceases to be perfectly plain through the town. Its boundaries are as plainly marked now as if drawn on a map; where the flood went it left its ineffaceable track. Nearly one-half of the triangle in which Johnstown stood is plainly marked, one angle of the triangle pointing to the east and directly up the Conemaugh Valley, from which the flood descended. Its eastern side was formed by the line of the river. The second angle pointed toward the big stone arch bridge, which played such an important part in the tragedy. The western ran along the base of the mountain on the bank of Stony Creek, and the third angle was toward Stony Creek Valley.
Miles of Buildings in the Wreck.
Imagine that before the flood this triangle was thickly covered with houses. The lower or northern part was filled with solid business blocks, the upper or southern half with residences, for the most part built of wood. Picture this triangle as a mile and a half in its greatest length and three-quarters of a mile in its greatest breadth. This was the way Johnstown was ten days ago. Now imagine that in the lower half of this triangle, where the business blocks were, every object has been utterly swept away with the exception of perhaps seven scattered buildings. In their places is nothing but sand and heaps of débris. Imagine that in the upper portion of this triangle the pathway of destruction has been clearly cut. Along the pathway houses have been torn to pieces, turned upside down, laid upon their sides or twisted on their foundations. Put into the open space on the lower end of the triangle the tents and the fires of burning rubbish and you will have the picture of Johnstown to-day.
Unheeded Warnings.
The people had been warned enough about the dangers of their location. They had been told again and again that the dam was unsafe, and whenever the freshets were out there were stories and rumors of its probable breaking. The freshets had been high for many days before that fatal Friday. All the creeks were over their banks and their waters were running on the streets. Cellars and pavements were flooded. Reports from the dam showed that it was holding back more water than at any other time in its history. A telegraph despatch early in the afternoon gave startling information about the cracks in the dam, but it was the old story of the wolf. They had heard it so often that they heard it this time and did not care.
The first warning that the people had of their coming doom was the roar of the advancing wave. It rushed out of the valley at four o'clock in the afternoon with incredible swiftness. Those who saw it and are still alive say that it seemed to be as high as an ordinary house. It carried in its front an immense amount of battered wreckage, and over it hung a cloud of what seemed to be fog, but was the dust from the buildings it had destroyed. Straight across the river it rushed upon the apex of the triangle. It struck the first houses and swept them away in fragments. The cries and shrieks of the frightened people began to be heard above the roar of the floods, and a few steps further the great wave struck some unusually solid structure. Its force right in the centre was already diminished. On these houses it split and the greater part of it went on diagonally across the triangle, deflecting somewhat toward the north and so on down to the stone arch bridge.