At 1 o’clock in the afternoon the resistless flood tore away the huge lumber boom on Stony creek. This was the real beginning of the end. The enormous mass of logs was hurled down upon the doomed town. The lines of the two water courses were by this time obliterated, and Stony creek and the Conemaugh river were raging seas. The great logs levelled everything before them, crushing frame houses like eggshells and going on unchecked until the big seven-arch stone bridge over the Conemaugh river just below Johnstown was reached.
Had the logs passed this bridge Johnstown might have been spared much of its horror. There were already dead and dying, and homes had already been swept away, but the dead could only be counted by dozens and not yet by thousands. Wedged fast at the bridge, the logs formed an impenetrable barrier. People had moved to the second floor of their houses and hoped that the flood might subside. There was no longer a chance to get away, and had they known what was in store for them the contemplation of their fate would have been enough to make them stark mad. Only a few hours had elapsed from the time of the breaking of the lumber boom when the waters of Conemaugh lake rushed down upon them. The scoffers realized their folly. The dam had given way, and the immense body of water which had rested in a basin five miles long, two miles wide and seventy feet deep was let loose to begin its work of destruction.
The towering wall of water swooped down upon Johnstown with a force that carried everything before it. Had it been able to pass through the big stone bridge a portion of Johnstown might have been saved. The rampart of logs, however, checked the torrent and half the houses of the town were lifted from their foundations and hurled against it. This backed the water up into the town, and as there had to be an outlet somewhere, the river made a new channel through the heart of the lower part of the city. Again and again did the flood hurl itself against the bridge, and each wave carried with it houses, furniture and human beings. The bridge stood firm, but the railway embankment gave way, and some fifty people were carried down to their deaths in the new break. Through this new outlet the waters were diverted in the direction of the Cambria Iron Works, a mile below, and in a moment the great buildings of a plant valued at $5,000,000 were engulfed and laid low. Here had gathered a number of iron workers, who felt that they were out of the reach of the flood, and almost before they realized their peril they were swept away into the seething torrent.
It was now night, and darkness added to the terror of the situation. Then came flames to make the calamity all the more appalling. Hundreds of buildings had been piled up against the stone bridge. The inmates of but few of them had had time to escape. Just how many people were imprisoned in that mass of wreckage may never be known, but the number was estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000. The wreckage was piled to a height of fifty feet, and suddenly flames began leaping up from the summit. A stove had set fire to that part of the wreck above the water, and the scene that was then witnessed is beyond description. Shrieks and prayers from the unhappy beings imprisoned in the wrecked houses pierced the air, but little could be done. Men, women and children, held down by timbers, watched with indescribable agony the flames creep slowly toward them until the heat scorched their faces, and then they were slowly roasted to death.
Those who were held fast in the wreck by an arm or a leg begged piteously that the imprisoned limb be cut off. Some succeeded in getting loose with mangled limbs, and one man cut off his arm that he might get away. Those who were able worked like demons to save the unfortunates from the flames, but hundreds were burned to death.
Meanwhile Johnstown had been literally wiped from the face of the earth, Cambria City was swept away and Conemaugh borough was a thing of the past. The little village of Millville, with a population of one thousand, had nothing left of it but the school-house and the stone buildings of the Cambria Iron Company. Woodvale was gone and South Fork wrecked. Hundreds of people were drowned in their homes, hundreds were swept away in their dwellings and met death in the debris that was whirled madly about on the surface of the flood; hundreds, as has been said, were burned, and hundreds who sought safety on floating driftwood were overwhelmed by the flood or washed to death against obstructions. The instances of heroism and self-sacrifice were never excelled, perhaps not equalled, on a battle-field. Men rather than save themselves alone died nobly with their families, and mothers willingly gave up their lives rather than abandon their children.
“At 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” said Electrician Bender, of the Western Union at Pittsburg, “the girl operator at Johnstown was cheerfully ticking away; she soon had to abandon the office on the first floor because the water was three feet deep there. She said she was wiring from the second story and the water was gaining steadily. She was frightened, and said that many houses around were flooded. This was evidently before the dam broke, for our man here said something encouraging to her, and she was talking back as only a cheerful girl operator can when the receiver’s skilled ears caught a sound of the wire made by no human hand. The wires had grounded or the house had been swept away in the flood, no one knows which now. At 3 o’clock the girl was there and at 3:07 we might as well have asked the grave to answer us.”
Edward Deck, a young railroad man of Lockport, saw an old man floating down the river on a tree trunk, with agonized face and streaming gray hair. Deck plunged into the torrent and brought the old man safely ashore. Scarcely had he done so, when the upper story of a house floated by on which Mrs. Adams, of Cambria, and her two children were both seen. Deck plunged in again, and while breaking through the tin roof of the house cut an artery in his left wrist, but though weakened with loss of blood, he succeeded in saving both mother and children.
J. W. Esch, a brave railroad employe, saved sixteen lives at Nineveh.
At Bolivar a man, woman and child were seen floating down in a lot of drift. The mass of debris commenced to part, and by desperate efforts the husband and father succeeded in getting his wife and little one on a floating tree. Just then the tree washed under the bridge and a rope was thrown out. It fell upon the man’s shoulders. He saw at a glance that he could not save his dear ones, so he threw the means of safety to one side and gripped in his arms those who were with him. A moment later the tree struck a floating house. It turned over, and in a second the three persons were in the seething waters, being carried to their death.