The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

Author:David McCullough [McCullough, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Social Science, General, United States, USA, History, History of the Americas, History - U.S., Regional History, United States - 19th Century, 19th Century, Pennsylvania, Disasters & Disaster Relief, History: World, State & Local, Gilded Age, Johnstown (Cambria County; Pa.), Johnstown (Pa.), Floods - Pennsylvania - Johnstown (Cambria County), Johnstown, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), Johnstown (Cambria County), Floods, Middle Atlantic, Johnstown (Pa.) - History, c 1800 to c 1900, American history: c 1800 to c 1900, United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900
ISBN: 9780671207144
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1987-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

But Alma Hall stood through the night, as did the Presbyterian Church and its parsonage, Dr. Lowman’s house, where a small crowd had gathered in the top floor, and the Methodist parsonage, where the Chapmans and their assorted guests huddled together in the numbing cold praying for morning. The buildings survived because they were on the lee side of the big, stone Methodist Church. Standing as it did, at the corner of Franklin and Locust, on the northeastern corner of the park, the church was one of the first sizable buildings in town to be struck by the wave. Not only had it held, but it had split the wave and so served as a shield for buildings directly in line behind it. (One tale to come out of Alma Hall later on told of a voice in the dark saying, “We’ve been saved by the Methodist Church,” whereupon another voice answered back, “Only the Catholic Church can save!”)

Elsewhere in the night the story was quite different. Buildings caved in or caught fire and burned to the water line. The St. John’s fire was the biggest and most spectacular, but there were fires among several houses close by; the Keystone Hotel caught fire and there were one or two small fires over in Kernville.

And aside from the many large groups of people gathered inside Alma Hall, Dr. Swan’s house, or the other buildings that were still standing, there were any number of smaller groups of four to six, or even one to two, people who spent the night inside their own tiny attics or atop the roofs of little houses that bobbed about with the current. Some were closed in under roof beams, with no windows to look out or escape through; they were still alive, but trapped, and with no way of knowing what might happen next.

At least one family had jumped into a large bed when the water rushed up their stairs. The bed was borne clear to the ceiling by the water, and the family stayed there, floating inside their own house through the remainder of the night.

Another family named Williams had their house split in half at the bridge, then went floating up the Stony Creek in what was left of the attic. In the darkness that night Mrs. Williams gave birth to a baby boy; and the family stayed there until morning, soaked, freezing cold, the baby wrapped in a shawl.

Scores of others floated on rooftops or freight cars or half-submerged debris, without any protection from the pouring rain. A Mrs. Jacob Malzi hung on to the eaves of a house all night, up to her waist in water. A Miss Minnie Chambers had climbed inside a freight car which had been carried through the cut near the bridge and smashed to pieces against the roof of the Cambria works, where she, miraculously still alive, spent the night holding on to a small pipe that stuck up through the roof. James Shumaker lay half-unconscious across

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