“It struck first against the jam, and thus lost most of its fierce energy, flowing thence southward in a heavy stream, which tossed about houses in the most fantastic way, so that this part of the town looks much like a child’s toy-village poured out of a box hap-hazard; the houses are not torn to pieces generally.
“About half the loss of life was in this district, for all Johnstown became speedily a lake twenty or more feet deep, and stayed so all night; and it was here, and not in the direct path of the flood, that all the ‘rescuing’ of people from roofs and floating timbers occurred.
“Nothing of the kind was possible in the flood itself. Likewise, after the break in the embankment had occurred, and the flood began to recede from Johnstown, it was from this district chiefly that people were carried off down stream on floating wreckage. All that came within the direct path of the flood was fast within the jam.
“The existence of this temporary Johnstown reservoir naturally broke the continuity of the flood discharge, and transformed it into something not greatly different from an ordinary but very heavy freshet. Cambria City, just below the bridge, was badly wrecked, with the loss of hundreds of lives; but in the main, from Johnstown down, the flood ceased to be very destructive. It took out almost every bridge it came to, for fifty miles, and washed away tracks, and did other minor damage, but the Johnstown ‘reservoir’ saved hundreds of lives below it by equalizing the flow.”
THE DAY EXPRESS DISASTER.
John Barr, the conductor in charge of the Pullman parlor car on the first section of the day express, which was caught in the flood at Conemaugh, told a thrilling story of his experience.
His train, with two others, had been run onto a siding on high ground at Conemaugh Station, opposite the big round-house. He saw the water coming and describes it as having the appearance of a mountain moving toward him.
He immediately ran to his car and shouted to his passengers to run for their lives. John Davis, connected with a large rolling mill near Lancaster, was traveling from Colorado with his invalid wife and two children, aged 4 and 6. Mr. Davis was engaged in getting his wife off the car, and Conductor Barr grabbed up the two children, and, with one under each arm, started for the hills, with the water right at his heels. He ran a distance of about 200 yards and barely managed to deposit his precious burden on safe ground before the flood swept past him.
Mr. Barr said it would never be known how many persons lost their lives from the ill-fated train. The one passenger coach which was carried away had some people in it; how many nobody knows. At least twenty were drowned. A freight train was between the day express and the flood on an adjoining track, and this served to in a measure protect his train.
Some idea of the terrible force of the flood may be gained from Mr. Barr’s statement that the engines in the round-house, thirty-seven in number, swept past him standing half way out of the water, their forty tons of weight not being sufficient to take them beneath the surface. The baggage car was lifted clear out of the water and landed on the other side of the river.