When persons can’t be found it is taken as conclusive evidence that they have been drowned. It is believed that the flood has buried a great many people below the bridge in the ground lying just below the Cambria Works. Here the rush of waters covered the railroad tracks ten feet deep with a coating of stones. Whether they will ever be dug for remains to be seen. Meantime, those who are easier to reach will be hunted for. There are many corpses in the area of rubbish that drifted down and lodged against the stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Out of this rubbish one thousand bodies have already been taken. The fire that was started by the driftwood touching against the burning Catholic Church as it floated down was still burning.
Walk almost anywhere through the devastated district and you will hear expressions like this: “Why, you see that pile of wreckage there. There are three bodies buried beneath that pile. I know them, for I lived next door. They are Mrs. Charles E. Kast and her daughter, who kept a tavern, and her bartender, C. S. Noble.”
Henry Rogers, of Pittsburg, is here caring for his relatives. “I am scarcely in a condition to talk,” he says. “The awful scenes I have just witnessed and the troubles of my relatives have almost unnerved me. My poor aunt, Mrs. William Slick, is now a raving maniac. Her husband was formerly the County Surveyor. He felt that the warning about the dam should not be disregarded. Accordingly he made preparations to go to a place of safety. His wife was just recovering from an illness, but he had to take her on horseback, and there was no time to get a carriage. They escaped, but all their property was washed away. Mrs. Slick for a time talked cheerfully enough, and said they should be thankful they had escaped with their lives. But on Sunday it was noticed that she was acting strangely. By night she was insane. I suppose the news that some relatives had perished was what turned her mind. I am much afraid that Mrs. Slick is not the only one in Johnstown whose reason has been dethroned by the calamity. I have talked with many citizens, and they certainly seem crazy to me. When the excitement passes off I suppose they will regain their reason. The escape of my uncle, George R. Slick, and his wife, I think was really providential. They, too, had determined to heed the warning that the dam was unsafe. When the flood came they had a carriage waiting at the front door. Just as they were entering it, the water came. How it was, my aunt cannot tell me, but they both managed to catch on to some debris, and were thus floated along. My aunt says she has an indistinct recollection of some one having helped her upon the roof of a house. The person who did her this service was lost. All night they floated along on the roof. They suffered greatly from exposure, as the weather was extremely chilly. Next morning they were fortunately landed safely. My uncle, however, is now lying at the point of death. I have noticed a singular coincidence here. Down in the lower end of the city stood the United Presbyterian parsonage. The waters carried it two miles and a half, and landed it in Sandy Vale Cemetery. Strange as it may seem, the sexton’s house in the cemetery was swept away and landed near the foundations of the parsonage. I have seen this myself, and it is commented on by many others.”
In one place the roofs of forty frame houses were packed in together just as you would place forty bended cards one on top of another. The iron rods of a bridge were twisted into a perfect spiral six times around one of the girders. Just beneath it was a woman’s trunk, broken up and half filled with sand, with silk dresses and a veil streaming out of it. From under the trunk men were lifting the body of its owner, perhaps, so burned, so horribly mutilated, so torn limb from limb that even the workmen, who have seen so many of these frightful sights that they have begun to get used to them, turned away sick at heart. In one place was a wrecked grocery store—bins of coffee and tea, flour, spices and nuts, parts of the counter and the safe mingled together. Near it was the pantry of a house, still partly intact, the plates and saucers regularly piled up, a waiter and a teapot, but not a sign of the woodwork, not a recognizable outline of a house.
In another place was a human foot, and crumbling indications of a boot, but no signs of a body. A hay-rick, half ashes, stood near the centre of the gorge. Workmen who dug about it to-day found a chicken coop, and in it two chickens, not only alive but clucking happily when they were released. A woman’s hat, half burned; a reticule, with part of a hand still clinging to it; two shoes and part of a dress told the story of one unfortunate’s death. Close at hand a commercial traveler had perished. There was his broken valise, still full of samples, fragments of his shoes, and some pieces of his clothing.
Scenes like these were occurring all over the charred field where men were working with pick and axe and lifting out the poor, shattered remains of human beings, nearly always past recognition or identification, except by guess-work, or the locality where they were found. Articles of domestic use scattered through the rubbish helped to tell who some of the bodies were. Part of a set of dinner plates told one man where in the intangible mass his house was. In one place was a photograph album with one picture still recognizable. From this the body of a child near by was identified. A man who had spent a day and all night looking for the body of his wife, was directed to her remains by part of a trunk lid.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
The language of pathos is too weak to describe the scenes where the living were searching for their loved and lost ones among the dead.