The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1874-07-31
Che 8atlana daily 6lube.
FRIDAY. JULY 81, 1874
[From the world.l
PITTSDURGHS FLOOD.
TIE TERRIBLE DEVASTATION
WROUGHT ny SUNDAYS STOR NJ.

THE NUMBER OF DEATHS STATED AT TWO
HUNDRED AND SINETEES-oNE HUNDRED
AND FIVE BODIES RECOVERED THE
TRACK OF THE FLOOD MEASURES OF
RELIEF FOR THE sUFFERERs-ExTEN
s1vE DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY.
PIrTsBuRo, July 2S.
l have spent all day in the mud and mis-
cellaneous rubbish which cover the sites of
half hundred homes in Allegheny city
From the top of Troy Hill, or from the
steep sides of the Butchers Run Valley,
you can track, and, in spite of the smoky
air, with much accuracy, the flood of Sun
day night from its beginning away up in
the hills, four miles back, to its final exit
into the Allegheny river. Butchers Run
Hill lies between the river or creek it is
named after and what was once Spring
Garden avenue. Butchers Run was a
street, too, for the people thought they had
got the creek into sewer and had passed
it over and built houses alongside. These
two streets, running up a few miles from
the city into the hills, join below the hill
on which you are standing To the people,
who lived on either street, there was moth
ing but the two streets meeting and others
intersecting them, with an open meadow,
and then more streets between the junction
and the river. An hour and a halt of rain
Sunday night made these places desolate
and waste, as you see them now from the
steep hillside; converging lines of ruins,
with wider ruin at their junction, and the
desert of waste left by their swift race be-
yond into the river To day the path bro
ken from the hills through the valley is
marked, too, by crowds of curiosity hunters
two thirds women, walking in mud latchet
doom and ctruuJlipU the militia
which blocks the path wherever work is
going on. But the way is plain enough,
too, from the conformation of the ground.
1t is only that more water than there was
room for has been running down hill
Butchers Run was an utterly insignifi-
cant and despicable thread of muddy water
even whore it was not turned contemptu-
ously into new brick sewer rs it came
within the town limits and was hidden an
eternal farewell. But it comes out of the
hills, and all down its narrow path steep
walls of earth rising LOCO feet high, and at
angles sometimes almost VERTICAL beset
and hem it in on both sides. These hills
are themselves scanned with gullies, and
worn and erodcd at every rod by lesser
waterloo presenting now, in contrast
with the exuberant vegetation of the genter
sleeps around, raw and ragged surfaces of
combed and sucked away. Stray houses
on the banks of the upper stream set their
backs into the hill-sides, and lower down
become more frequent till they near the
close-set frame houses of n Dutch tenement
district, side by side, back to back, even
where there was room, and all huddled to-
| gether over the creek, which had been
| suiced into sewer. Butchers Run has
never had freshet worth speaking of, and
| Spring Garden avenue was a street, and not
Il river; but the street became river a
narrow valley, penned in by the same steep
Hills, and running up from the town into
the highlands beyond. This channel ran
almost south; the other almost east to their
junction in the heart of Allegheny city
Sunday morning last it rained heavily,
but nothing unusual happened The streets
as happens in a hilly town, were set afloat
u little in places, and the Butchers Run
sewer carried off, with not great deal of
room to spare, all the water that collected
| from the slopes around In the afternoon
the rain held up, but the skies darkencd
continually, and at seven o'clock the storms
seemed to threaten the city of Pittsburg
and its suburbs, for Allegheny city is to
Pittsburg much as Williamsburg to New
York. They came from the southwest and
northeast with binding lightning, and met
in mid air above the city at half past seven.
Instantly, as it seemed to some, the air was
filled with water Others say that the rain
seemed heavy indeed, but not eXtraordin-
airy. The flashes of lightning were so con
tinuous that for half an hour the atmDs-
phcrc was ablaze with light, but impene-
trable to the eye by reason of the wells Of
rain. Down in the low districts of Pitts
burg people heard the water smashing
through the streets. They had often heart
it in a heavy shower, and went to bed calm
ly enough, only expecting to find one oil
two impossible thoroughfares in the morn.
ing and new tax bills to pay. 1t was Sun.
DAY night, and church-time, and the
churches had their usual rainy-night au
dience. The thunder and lightning were
severe enough to somewhat interrupt the
services, but in Pittsburg. and, for the mos
part in Allegheny city, people went home
through the soaking streets and went tc
bed unconscious that anything had hap
pened What had happened? In half ar
hour after the storm burst, and while the
congregations were at prayer, up in the
miserable hollow path made fit for the floot
the food had come and risen to its height
The ragged. steep hills poured at every roc
a torrent of rain water and its wash of mud
red and yellow, straight down. Where thu
country was open every seam in the hill
was torrent where it was built upon ev
cry alley.way leading down the hill side
became channel for the waters. The i'll
fated people along those two fatal road
listened TO the rain and feared nothing.
freshet in the run was a thing unknown
and much less was it suspected that tn
avenue would become river. But was i
the rain and nothing else that roared 81
loudly, and only the thunder that was rum
bling so sulenly and ficrcely? 1t was tn
rise OF the waters that, ere their noise coul'
be distinguished from the noise of the storm
had swept into their channels and cut OF
retreat, now from those at the upper end O
the fumes, and now it was only a minut
from those halfway down to the city. /
the heart of the city itself, along both tn
convcrging routes, the waters found the lit
tie, implanted frame houses set in NOR
thickly as they came along. Further "
some people hurried to the hills and es
capped, and some chung to their houses eve
and escaped But here the flood came be
fore the news of the food, and announce
itself by sweeping in at the doorways, an
telling the people that it had trapped then
wholly, for the only escape was by flight
: and flight one way was cut oil by the tor
rent, while flight the other way by tn
: houses themselves, set back to back in clos
r array, and with the water now at the sid
i of their second-story windows, and nov
i rendng their walls asunder was equal
+ impossible. If even these immense masso
0 of water had had an open pathway the
: might have gone off harmless or have dc
y scended upon the houses below with fore
that could have been borne, but along tn
run they tore up plank road and bea
9 down the nearest houses with the timber
@ and pried up the broken wood with stone
n and mud into a dam. Across the mario,
;, channel above the dam they rose till threug
e sheer weight they broke it down, and the
it was a lake, and not gorged creek ina
was tossed upon the unconscious peopl
below This was repeated in the ayenu
Il and in both streams, dam after DAM eac
y larger than the last, was formed ana broke
momently. That explains the RUIN whic