The Johnstown dam break (Part 1)

to the American experience I'm David McCullough on an afternoon in May 1889 one of the worst disasters in the nation's history took place in a small industrial city in western Pennsylvania a city that few Americans had ever heard of in a matter of days the whole world knew about Johnstown a dam had failed in the mountains above the city and down came a wall of water that was anywhere from 20 to 40 to 60 feet high or higher depending on the width of the valley it destroyed everything in its path when it hit Johnstown the city was obliterated why did it happen what or who was to blame this is our story the Johnstown Flood I grew up in western Pennsylvania I'd heard about the Johnstown Flood my whole life as children we used to shout run for the hills the dam was busted little knowing what real terror is in those words it wasn't until years later when I was at the Library of Congress one day and saw a set of old photographs of the disaster that I came to realize what a horrible event it really had been I wanted to know more I read one old book than another pretty soon I found I was writing a book of my own digging into old records interviewing survivors many of whom were still alive then that was in the 1960s I'm back in Johnstown now this is the main exhibition hall of the new Johnstown Flood Museum behind me is an abstract representation of the wall of water and debris that struck the city our film is an expanded version of a film made especially for the museum and that won an Academy Award it's the work of the distinguished documentary producer Charles Guggenheim and part of what you're about to see the new part is a rare new view of life as it was lived on the lake in the mountains at the exclusive South Fork fishing and hunting Club in old photographs newly discovered by mr. Guggenheim and the South Fork fishing and hunting Club is the key to the story for this is not the chronicle of a simple calamity of nature not any means [Music] since the beginning of time the little kanima flowed from the forests of the Alleghenies to the valley below its journey uninterrupted until the coming of man [Music] here in the 1860s and 70s in the Louisville floodplain where the little Conemaugh meets the Stoney Creek the city of Johnstown had thundered to life with the coming together of coal and steel [Music] in the year 1889 the population had reached 30,000 packed so tight there was scarcely room to build more at the center of things was the Cambria iron company with its Bessemer plant working night and day Cambria made steel rails barbed wire and plowshares they worked ten and twelve hour a day shifts six days a week sometimes seven the valley was full of smoke and the city glowed 24 hours a day with the fires of progress Cambria alone employed 7,000 men and at a dollar fifty a day a person was doing well compared with other industrial towns the leaders in Johnstown were progressive even paternalistic [Music] at the pay window on Saturday a man wore his best suit out of respect for the job he had and his pride in the community as towns went Johnstown was a good place to plan a future and raise a family [Music] downtown there were new electric lights in the streets and three new blocks at most any day of the week one could see a new show at the Opera House on Main Aur Washington Street in 1889 there were already 70 phones in town 27 churches 123 saloons 3 newspapers a new company hospital two railroad stations and up-to-date fire and police departments staffed predominantly by the Irish who had originally come to build the railroads and stayed on the Germans had also come in large numbers starting in the 1840s some fleeing revolutions others seeking economic opportunity and religious freedom the vast majority were either Irish Scotch Irish Cornish German or Welsh with the Germans and the Welsh outnumbering all the rest together they had established a thriving mercantile community filling their stores with the latest goods brought in on the mainline from Chicago Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in the spring of 1889 there was little on the Main Street of Johnstown that would give rise to speculation there was a life anywhere else but fourteen miles up the valley there was indeed another life going on and it was a very different life it was known by the 61 members from Pittsburgh who were invited to join as the South Fork fishing and hunting club but to everyone else the place was largely a mystery it's summer homes and how buildings have hidden beyond the shoreline [Music] their owners referred to them as cottages but with few exceptions they were three stories tall with 14 to 15 rooms overlooking the bolthouse's their deep porches and generous windows commanded a splendid view of the mountain lake but even the largest of the cottages was dwarfed by the 47 room clubhouse where during the season most members and their guests stayed and where everyone was required to take their meals [Applause] here on weekends and during the summer months they spent time together away from Pittsburgh here in the gentle woods even the very hottest days were comfortable under the big trees here young men and women could stroll and vote with those of their own kind [Music] here protected by the privacy of their land they were free from the intrusions of the outside world interrupted only by those who work the grounds and maintained the dam it was a dam built and abandoned by the state of Pennsylvania over 20 years earlier and subsequently neglected by later owners that now demanded the club's attention its previous owners had taken little interest in making it safe and as for the club's part they had removed as much as 3 feet from its top in order to make it wide enough for their carriages to pass considering the problems at the dam more bothersome than alarming the club engaged in periodic maintenance filling leaks and weak points with mud rocks brush and manure a most concern was the spillway it was now only four feet lower than the top of the dam creating the possibility that a heavy rain could overfill the spillway and cause water to crest over the dams weakest point the center but for those who came to get away from the city the spillway represented a magic place to meet and to picnic no one found this place more enchanting than the Clark family not as well known as the Carnegie's and the Fricks they were nonetheless one of the first families invited to membership in the club Charles J Clark like his contemporaries was well-to-do well married and an important man in Pittsburgh he was representative of that small group who during the latter part of the 19th century helped lead Pittsburgh into unprecedented industrial growth Clark himself was in the transportation business riding the wave of prosperity brought about by the ascendance of coal and steel [Music] in the 1880s Pittsburg looked very much like Johnstown ten times over [Music] here to the workers lived on the side of the hill and could name the men who ran things in the valley men like Andrew Carnegie Carnegie had emerged from Pittsburgh slag town to become one of the richest men in the world and a member of the South Fork fishing and hunting club also there was club member Henry Clay Frick the great coke King solitary and humorless he was at forty considered the most important man in Pittsburgh and Henry Phipps no risk taker but a genius with figures who worked alongside Carnegie and Frick and attached his future to theirs and the quiet frail-looking Andrew Mellon who in his 30s was already financing the enterprises of the most important names in Pittsburgh in the 1880s a small group of Pittsburgh industrialists were moving goods to every corner of the world the man in charge of moving things was Robert Pitcairn a childhood friend of Carnegie's and like him a member of the Southfork fishing and hunting club [Music] but Karen was head of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad a company that was on its way to becoming the biggest and the most powerful political force in the state [Music] the railroad did business with nearly everybody and connected the towns in Pennsylvania to the nation with over 75 thousand miles of track [Music] like Pitcairn's rail load the great industrial fortunes of Pittsburgh were tied together by steel and the products made from it companies owned by members of the South Fork fishing and hunting club represented some of the largest corporations in the United States [Music] fortunes flowing from this success were represented in the homes now going up on Pittsburgh's East Side Pitcairn had built himself a 50-room mansion with room to house a staff of 12 [Music] Charles Clarke's Victorian estate was named Alicia with a greenhouse as large as the house itself Henry Clay Fricks residence was predictably called Clayton lawyer Philander Knox's home though less ostentatious was strategically located next to his clients artisans and materials were imported from Europe to create Italianate like interiors or a mixture of everything social gatherings flowed effortlessly from mansion to mansion and families living here had a propensity for marrying one another it wasn't until the latter part of the century that they were inclined to explore the possibility that life and other places might be as interesting as their own [Music] most vacations away from Pittsburgh were brief and the places visited predictable [Music] but few summers went by without putting time aside for the mountains near Pittsburgh even Andrew Carnegie who now owned a house in New York and a castle in Scotland out of Pittsburgh they came leaving behind a world they had the luxury to escape [Music] it was an attractive idea for lawyer and club member Philander Knox and other of the best people in Pittsburgh to buy a piece of tranquility in the quiet mountains away from the city dirt and smoke it probably escaped him as it did others that he and his clients had bought shares in a lake and a dam in which problems lay below the surface the dam had already failed once and a previous owner had sold the discharge pipes for scrap it was now impossible to relieve the pressure on the dam or to drain the lake for repairs knowingly or unknowingly what the members of the South Fork fishing and hunting club had purchased was a neglected dam in which those in charge were not willing to invest money for repairs [Music] traveling to southfork demanded less than a two-hour train ride from Pittsburgh four members a weekend there was not out of the question [Music] southfork looked like a dozen other small towns along the main line but it was the nearest point of any size to the clubs at Lake anima while engines took on water and cold members of the club left the train and were met by carriages for a two and a half mile trip up the mountain road carriages heading for the club took the road to the right onto the breast of the dam itself it was a trip that some members took with more than passing interest robert Pitcairn for instance on one visit asked benjamin ruff the president of the club who had purchased the dam and sold shares in it to join him to discuss it in the spring of 1889 the club summer season was about to begin some boats were already in the water [Music] in front of the clubhouse 25 bath houses stood newly painted early arrivals gathered to watch the annual launching of the fleet [Music] waiters and domestics recruited from the valley stood ready to greet the guests as the children of the club's employees looked on the young men and women up from Pittsburgh filled their days in ways the locals found endlessly fascinated each morning there were planned activities frequently under the direction of paid instructors preparing the young men from Pittsburgh to compete with the very best in eastern schools on a bright breezy day 50 sales could be seen on the water no one took advantage or more delight in the club than the Clark family their son Luis had invented in Pittsburgh and introduced at the lake a battery-powered catamaran of his own design it was complete with searchlight and sailor suit in the afternoon the Clarks would tour the lake in one of the clubs steamboats [Music] young Lewis Clark besides being an accomplished inventor was a gifted amateur photographer who with a camera of his own design recorded the only extant pictures of life on the lake in the evening the Clarks would stroll down the boardwalk to the clubhouse and join other families for dinner and gather later on the side steps with the Henry Fitz's for a concert by the local German band [Music] it was a perfect setting for sons and daughters of the best families of Pittsburgh to get to know [Music] and evening young Lewis Clark would take his camera to the lake and impress the young ladies with his sense of composition and light [Music] no summer at Southfork was complete without moments in costume the remoteness had a way of exciting fantasies a fondness of depicting lives in simpler times broadened trunks from Pittsburgh costumes were used to create living tableaus depicting classics and poetry and prose but exploring the far reaches of the lake remained the favorite pastime [Music] [Applause] with journeys usually ending at the lakes most northern shore where the water touched the great earthen dam five hundred feet and fourteen miles above the town below [Music] people living in Johnstown knew very little about what kind of life was going on up on the mountain a few had ventured often near the light to hunt and fish and had been turned away others had brought back stories about seeing sailboats on the mountain and that seemed very strange [Music] but there was one man in Johnstown who considered the dam and lake far more than a mystery as head of the Cambria ironworks Daniel J Morel was by far the most important man in town he had successfully placed Johnstown in the forefront of steelmaking even before Pittsburgh had a mill but in recent years Carnegie and others had stolen his best men and morale was not inclined to remain passive about the dam or what the club was up to on the mountain in the fall of 1880 he wrote a letter to club president VF ruff requesting that he be allowed to send his people to the dam to make a critical inspection John Fulton was morels chief engineer a geologist and a deeply religious man Fulton arrived at the dam to have a meeting with ruff and to see for himself Fulton took every opportunity to question ruff regarding the dam safety Fulton confirmed that the damage to the dams base created by the removal of the discharge pipes had never been dealt with he pointed out that the leaks ruff discounted as being the product of spring water were in fact coming from the lake itself he also saw evidence that high water had begun to make a cut on the dams westside ruff avoided telling Fulton that the club had lowered the dam and had compromised the spillway by installing fish screens at the mouth to keep the game fish from escaping Fortin left that day convinced the dam was an accident ready to happen morale read Fulton's assessment and passed it directly onto ruff at southfork proposing to share the cost of repairs ruff replied on December 2nd we consider Fulton's conclusion as to our only safe course no more value than his assertion you and your people are in no danger from our enterprise it started on May 28th somewhere over Kansas and Nebraska and within 24 hours it had reached the already rain-soaked slopes of the Alleghenies in fields around Johnstown the earth could not absorb more water at Lake anima 8 inches had fallen streams were forming that had never been seen before rivers were rising at better than a foot an hour in Johnstown there was water in the streets and though this was not new this time things were more ominous that morning George T Swank the editor and proprietor of the Johnstown Tribune worked on his journal he had seen Johnstown underwater before but nothing like this from his second-story office window he had observed people being rescued in boats and livestock being swept down the street by a current which had turned the streets into rivers [Music] - eastbound trains the Chicago limited and the freight from Derry got as far as South Fork where they were being held word came down that there was trouble at Lille their run had risen more than six feet and washed out a quarter mile of track the day Express with 90 passengers plus crew was being held at East Kannamma for further orders nothing now could move either east or west [Music] with lines down track men were out searching for the trouble [Music] when club superintendent Elias Unger awoke that morning he saw that the lake had risen almost two feet overnight and was rising an inch every 10 minutes Unger had special reasons to be concerned he had recently been named the club's general manager and had taken part in the inspection visits of both Pitcairn and Fulton now he could see that the spillway could not handle more water a problem made worse by the debris that was accumulating around the club's fish screens Ungar saw other problems old wounds were reopening at 11:30 John Park the dams engineer left in hopes of getting a warning message to Johnstown in the meantime Unger had gathered a crew he was attempting to free the spillway and to raise the top of the dam [Applause] [Music]

Channel: elvladyman

Views: 77,123

Rating: 4.4603176 out of 5

Keywords: flood, dam fail, inundacion, disaster, dam safety, represa, engineering, ingenieria

Id: YVzHQKMQQeE

Length: 35min 24sec (2124 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018