FOURTEENTH STREET, WASHINGTON, D. C., IN THE FLOOD.
The first passengers that came from Altoona to New York by the Pennsylvania Railroad since the floods included five members of the “Night Off” Company, which played in Johnstown on Thursday night, about whom considerable anxiety was felt for some time, till E. A. Eberle received telegrams from his wife, the contents of which he at once gave to the press. Mrs. Eberle was among the five who arrived.
“No words can tell the horrors of the scenes we witnessed,” she said in answer to a request for an account of her experiences, “and nothing that has been published can convey any idea of the awful havoc wrought in those few but apparently never-ending minutes in which the worst of the flood passed us.
“Our company left Johnstown on Friday morning. We only got two miles away, as far as Conemaugh, when we were stopped by a landslide a little way ahead. About noon we went to dinner, and soon after we came back some of our company noticed that the flood had extended and was washing away the embankment on which our train stood. They called the engineer’s attention to the fact, and he took the train a few hundred feet further. It was fortunate he did so, for a little while after the embankment caved in.
“Then we could not move forward or backward, as ahead was the landslide and behind there was no track. Even then we were not frightened, and it was not till about three o’clock, when we saw a heavy iron bridge go down as if it were made of paper, that we began to be seriously alarmed. Just before the dam broke a gravel train came tearing down, with the engine giving out the most awful shriek I ever heard. Every one recognized that this was a note of warning. We fled as hard as we could run down the embankment, across a ditch, and for a distance equal to about two blocks up the hillside. Once I turned to look at the vast wall of water, but was hurried on by my friends. When I had gone about the distance of another block the head of the flood had passed far away, and with it went houses, cars, locomotives, everything that a few minutes before had made up a busy scene. The wall of water looked to be fifty feet high. It was of a deep yellow color, but the crest was white with foam.
“Three of us reached the house of Mrs. William Wright, who took us in and treated us most kindly. I did not take any account of time, but I imagine it was about an hour before the water ceased to rush past the house. The conductor of our train, Charles A. Wartham, behaved with the greatest bravery. He took a crippled passenger on his back in the rush up the hill. A floating house struck the cripple, carried him away and tore some of the clothes off Wartham’s back, and he managed to struggle on and save himself. Our ride to Ebensburg, sixteen miles, in a lumber wagon without springs, was trying, but no one thought of complaining. Later in the day we were sent to Cresson and thence to Altoona.”