“Ten thousand dead,” was the announcement that came over the wires.
The effect can never be told. Centuries may come and go, but no century can make its mark in the history of time like that of the Nineteenth, with its aide, the Conemaugh.
MIDST FIRE AND FLOOD.
Hundreds upon hundreds of lives were lost. The number cannot even be approximated, for in such regions there are always innumerable people—what the careless world calls its floating population—who would not be missed or accounted for until the Judgment roll is called.
Even on Monday, three days after the horror, mothers meandered about frantically begging that their children might be returned to them, and men with hearts brushed tears from their eyes and endeavored to make them believe that their dear ones had been rescued. Children pleadingly prayed that they might be saved, but the cruel, ever onward-rushing flood gathered them in and swept them onward.
To add to the horror the Johnstown Bridge, as if to add terror to terror and to make confusion worse confounded, swept from its approaches and precipitated the horror-stricken multitude into the torrent. An overturned stove in a dwelling inaugurated a conflagration. Nearly a hundred people were literally burned to death, thus adding holocaust to the far more preferable death by drowning.
Scarcely had the news of the terrible disaster been sent abroad than the alert newspapers had their commissioners speedily on their way to the scene.
Only the most meagre accounts had been given to the public for the reason that every mode of communication via telegraph or train had been cut off.
When the newspaper representatives reached Johnstown the scene was a pitiable one. The former town was a swamp. Debris was piled here, there and everywhere, and the pestilential stench from the dead bodies was next to unbearable.