History of the Johnstown Flood / Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

THE DÉBRIS ABOVE THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD BRIDGE.

One of the first to reach Johnstown from a distance was a New York World correspondent, who on Sunday wrote as follows:—

“I walked late yesterday afternoon from New Florence to a place opposite Johnstown, a distance of four miles. I describe what I actually saw. All along the way bodies were seen lying on the river banks. In one place a woman was half buried in the mud, only a limb showing. In another was a mother with her babe clasped to her breast. Further along lay a husband and wife, their arms wound around each other’s necks. Probably fifty bodies were seen on that one side of the river, and it must be remembered that here the current was the swiftest, and consequently fewer of the dead were landed among the bushes. On the opposite side bodies could also be seen, but they were all covered with mud. As I neared Johnstown the wreckage became grand in its massive proportions. In order to show the force of the current I will say that three miles below Johnstown I saw a grand piano lying on the bank, and not a board or key was broken. It must have been lifted on the crest of the wave and laid gently on the bank. In another place were two large iron boilers. They had evidently been treated by the torrent much as the piano had been.

“The scenes, as I neared Johnstown, were the most heart-rending that man was ever called to look upon. Probably three thousand people were scattered in groups along the Pennsylvania Railroad track and every one of them had a relative lying dead either in the wreckage above, in the river below, or in the still burning furnace. Not a house that was left standing was in plumb. Hundreds of them were turned on their sides, and in some cases three or four stood one on top of the other. Two miles from Johnstown, on the opposite side of the river from where I walked, stood one-half of the water-works of the Cambria Iron Company, a structure that had been built of massive stone. It was filled with planks from houses, and a large abutment of wreckage was piled up fully fifty feet in front of it. A little above, on the same side, could be seen what was left of the Cambria Iron Works, which was one of the finest plants in the world. Some of the walls are still standing, it is true, but not a vestige of the valuable machinery remains in sight. The two upper portions of the works were swept away almost entirely, and under the pieces of fallen iron and wood could be seen the bodies of more than forty workmen.

“At this point there is a bend in the river and the fiery furnace blazing for a quarter of a mile square above the stone bridge came into view.

“‘My God!’ screamed a woman who was hastening up the track, ‘can it be that any are in there?’

“‘Yes; over a thousand,’ replied a man who had just come from the neighborhood, and it is now learned that he estimated the number at one thousand too low.

“The scenes of misery and suffering and agony and despair can hardly be chronicled. One man, a clerk named Woodruff, was reeling along intoxicated. Suddenly, with a frantic shout, he threw himself over the bank into the flood and would have been carried to his death had he not been caught by some persons below.

“‘Let me die,’ he exclaimed, when they rescued him. ‘My wife and children are gone; I have no use for my life.’ An hour later I saw Woodruff lying on the ground entirely overcome by liquor. Persons who knew him said that he had never tasted liquor before.