Omaha daily bee., 1889-06-04
OMAHA TUESDAY MORNING. 4.

learn the fate Of their friends at the lake,
have just returned. They report no one at
the lake except the custodians and some
workmen. The lake is completely dried out.
The dam broke in the center at o'clock
Friday afternoon and at o'clock IL was dry.
That great body of water passed out In an
hour. Messrs. Park and VanBuren, who
were building q new drainage system at the
lake,
TRIED TO AVOID THE DISASTER
by digging n sluiceway on one side to ease
the pressure on the dam. They had about
forty men at work and did all they could
without avail. The water passed over the
dam about foot above the top, beginning at
$3.50.
Whatever happened in the way of a cloud
burst took place during tho night. There had
been but little rain up TO dark, and in the
morning, when the workmen arrived, the
lake was full and kept on rising rapidly until
2 O'Clock it began pouring over the dam
and undermining it. The men were sent three
or four times during the day to warn the
people of the danger. When the final break
came, at 3 O'Clock, there was a sound like
TREMENDOUS PEALs OF THUNDER.
Trees, rocks and earth were shot into mid.
air in great columns and then the wave
started down the ravine. A farmer who es-
capped said the water did not come like
wave but jumped on his house and
beat it to fragments in an instant. He
was safe upon the hillside, but his
wife and two children were killed. No dam
age was done to the club buildings. Tho
whole South Fork is swept, with no trees
standing.
The rescuing parties who are at work on
the mass of unburned wreckagc
in the river above the bridge
of bodies at the rate of ten to fifteen per
hour. In other parts of the submerged dis
triot many bodies are being taken out. A
careful estimate at this time of the bodies
f,.1,, Nl,n Nn1
loss of life most certainly will be from 5000
to 5000.
A COLD WAVE
has struck the town and the people are badly
in need of clothing. 1t is almost impossible
to get anything to eat. The citizens commit.
tee is making desperate efforts TO make the
Hungarians, at Cambria City, stop their rob-
bing, and men witr clubs will not permit the
foreigners to go outside their homes There
seems to be considerable race prejudice at
Cambria City, aud trouble may follow, as
both Americans and Hungarians are getting
worked up to considerable extent. Quite an
exciting scene took place in Johnstown last
night Hungarian was discovered by two
men in the act of blowing up safe in the
First National bank building, with dynamite.
In few minutes crowd was collected and
the cry Of
"LYNCH HIM'
was raised. In less time than 1t takes to tell
it the man was strung up to tree in what
was about the central portion of John stown
Not content with tins the vigilance commit
tee filed his body with bullets He remained
hanging to the tree for several hours, when
some person cut him down and buried him
with the other dead. While the searchers
were at work in Johnstown proper this
morning they came upon house and heard
q noise in it, They chopped through the roof
and found a man in the top story. They
pulled him out but he was too weak to give
his name.
THREE HUNDRED BODIES
have been discovered in the sand at Klein
yille near the mouth of Sandy creek. 1t is
now definitely said that only about four lives
were lost on the train that left Pittsburg
Friday morning last. Conductor Bell, who
had charge of the train, stated to-day that in
his opinion only four passengers were lost
Said he:
1--WE were between Conemaugh and Johns
town when the enginee saw the flood coming.
He gave word and we ran through the
| train and told the passengers to run to the
mountains for their lives, but the majority of
| them repained in the cars while the train.
men ran to the mountains. When the flood
| came it washed away the car next to the
| smoking car and left the others remaining.
| The people in the Pullman car were ducked
| but none of them were otherwise Injured
| The three or four passengers lost were men
| whose names l do not know"
Forty eight dead bodies are at Johnstown,
| station, and will be buried as fast as pos
| sible.
Fifty men are digging graves on Prospect
| Hill, and the bodies are being inferred as
| fast as possible. Mrs. Fem, wife of an en-
| gineer, tells
| PITIFUL TALE.
Her husband was out With her seven
| children she climbed to the second story,
then to the attic She cheered the frightened
| children, saying that God would care for
| them. AS the waters were rising higher.
| she was forced to fasten them, one by one, to
| pieces of floating timber and trust them to
| the pitiless waves, all the time speaking
| words of hope and encouragement, and
| kissing them goodbye. After all had gone
| the roof of the house was torn off, and the
| frail little mother was washed away with it
and rescued sixteen miles below. Her little
| brood of seven have not been heard from,
and they are supposed to be drowned. She
| is only one mother of the hundreds similarly
situated-one of the multitude.
OVER A THOUSAND BODIES
| have been taken from Kernville to-day. This
is official. The developments every hour
| make it more and more apparent that the
exact number of lives lost in the Johnstown
horror will never be known. All estimates
that have been made up to thi:
time are conservative, and when al
is known it will doubtless be
found too small. The population of Johns
tion of the valley effected by the flood is, or
was, from fifty thousand to fifty-fve thous
and. The Associated press representa-
tives to-day interviewed numerous lead
/ Ing CltlZeuS VI JOUHSIOWH WuO SuTNlNcU
the flood and the concensus of opinion was
that fully 30 per cent of the residents o.
Johnstowp and Cambria have been victims
of the fire and water. If this be true, the
total loss of life in the entire valley can mol
be less than 1000 or 5000, and possibly much
greater or the thousands who were de-
voured by the flames, and whose ashes res
beneath the smoking debris above Johns
town bridge, no definite information can
even be obtained. AS little will be learned
of hundreds that sank beneath the current
and We're borne swiftly down the Cone
maugh river, only to be deposited miles be-
low on the banks and in the driftwood of
the raging Ohio.
Probably one-third of the dead will never
be recovered, and it will take weeks hence
to enable even close estimate to be made o
the number of lives that were lost in tina
brief hour. That this estimate can never bt
accurate is understood when it is remem
bered that in many in stances many
| WHOLE FAMI LIES
and their relatives were swept away and
found a common grave beneath the wtld
waste of waters. The total destruction o.
the city leaves no date to even demonstrate
| that the names of these unfortunates ever
found place on the pages of eternity's his
| tory.
'All indications point TO the fact that the
death list will reach over 5000 and IN my
| opinion the missing will reach 5000 in mum