Dennis Zeedyk-Johnstown Flood

Author of Book: David McCullough
Date Read:

Book Report

First book report for my profile
Johnstown Flood
By David McCullough
268 pages

This book covered the Johnstown Flood that occurred on May 31, 1889 in Johnstown, PA. I remember reading about it as a kid. In a nutshell, there was an earthen dam 62′ and 850′ across and it created Lake Conemaugh that covered about 450 acres – designed to supply the Main Line canal (which went from Johnstown to Pittsburgh) with water. Originally the dam was built with 5 culverts to release water and keep the lake from getting too full and breaching the dam. These culverts were dammed up in 1879, which allowed the level of the lake to increase.

Starting on the night of May 30, the area began receiving heavy rains and ultimately received more rain in one day than ever recorded. Because the culverts were covered and the hillsides removed from timber, all of this rain drained from the various hillsides & creeks into the lake. By late morning, the dam was in danger of being breached. Although various warnings were sent out by person and telegraph, no one believed it because they had been hearing these kinds of warnings for years. At 3:10 pm, the dam broke, creating a wall of water, mud and trees to rip through the valley. It first destroyed a small village of South Fork, then Mineral Point, East Conemaugh, Woodvale and ultimately the large town of Johnstown. Overall, there were 30,000 people living in the valley. The wall of water & debris equivalent to the water going over Niagara Falls was traveling at approximately 40 mph and walls of water as high as 40′ high. In all 2,209 people were killed – the highest amount of people killed in a natural disaster in the USA at that time and close to the amount of Americans killed at the first day of Normandy Beach or killed on 9/11.

There were four reasons for the dams failure:
1) The damming of the culverts which prevented release of the water in a controlled manner.
2) The logging of the hillsides which prevented water from soaking into the soil and eroding into the lake.
3) Fish guards had been installed to keep the fish from leaving the lake. This became clogged with debris and increased the level of the lake lake.
4) There was an indentation in the middle of the dam that was lower than the rest of the dam and this is where the water crested & eroded the dam until it collapsed.

Immediately after the devastation, they were fortunate that it was cool for the next week. Although the rain made it hard to work, the coolness helped prevent decomposition of all the human and animal bodies stuck in the debris & strewn everywhere. There were many who thought they were fortunate that it was not at night when no one would have been able to run for safety when they saw/heard the tidal wave coming down the valley.

One interesting thing was that this was one of the first (and the largest) major disaster that Clara Barton and the International Red Cross assisted. She was there working tirelessly for five months, cementing her and the organization’s legend for disaster assistance.

I learned three things from this book:
1) Never live in a flood plain. I don’t think the risk is worth the possibility of lower prices.
2) Warnings of natural disasters should be heeded and a family should be prepared for many different types of emergencies.
3) When you live in an area where there are possibilities for major issues, do your own due diligence on the possibilities for an impact on your home & personal life. There were many people who had heard that the dam would collapse, but never went to check it out for themselves, even though they were only a few miles away. Personally, ifI saw the four reasons for the dam collapes (listed above) all associated with one dam, I would seriously reconsider living downstream from that dam.