The Springdale news., 1889-06-07
SCENES OF WOE.
The Conemaugh Valley Disaster
 Almost Indescribable.
Scenes of Death, Devastation and Woe Appalling Enough to Make the Strongest Heart Quail-The
 Search for the Dead.
Tho Number of Victims will Reach Many Thousands-Ghouls in Human Form EobbinG the Dead
 Swift Retribution
Back on the Ruinet Site of the City of
 ,JohnStowu.

Back on the Ruinei Site of the City Of
 Johnstowp.
 PITTSBURGH, Pa., June 2.-The first force of rescuers and press representa- tives who had been making every effort for two days to gain an entrance into the valley in which was located the city of Johnstown, accomplished their purpose just as the light of this mornings sun broke over the mountain tops surrounding the place of desolatiou. The news TO- ceived in this city during the day con- firms in almost every detail all of the gravest fears, statements and cOnJectureS that have been entertained. All reports agree that the city is literally ruin, the description of which is simply impossi- ble
 From Johnstown to Mineral Point tower the Pennsylvania roadbed has been completely swept away. For a distance of one-fourth of mile the road is unin- iured, then comes another complete wreck to a point above South Fork. Twenty seven Pennsylvania railroad locomotives and an unknown number of both freight cars and passenger coaches arc lying in the river bed under the de- brs of Johnstowu at the Stone bridge.
 Tho towns of Woodyille and Cone maugh borough, above JohnstOwn, arc swept as clearly off the face of the earth as if they had never had an existence. Of Woodville's population, of fifteen hundred souls, barely half dozen have been accounted for.
 The Hungarian colony at Cambria City arc stealing and plunderiug every thing they can reach. The work of exhuming the dead at Johnstown has only begun, but already more than one hundred bodies have been carried out of the ruins.
 Eleven carloads of finished collins and thirty undertakers arrived during the day, and the work of interment which began this afternoon will rapidly progress under the direction of spe- ially y-organized force of men.
 Nineveh will hereafter be known as the city of the dead, for at this point the Conemaugh has given up a large portion If it's dead. When the waters receded from the fields and bottom lands over which it had flowed, the stiff, staring and naked, bruised and mangled bodies of men, women and children, from the aged to the infant, lying in the soft mud, was a horrible sight, making heartsick those who witnessed it. Nunemacher's plan ing-mill was used as temporary morgue, and it was there that the blood stained, swollen and disfgured remains of whites and negroes were first placed for protection and Identification, if such q thing were possible. Some of the faces were wreathed in dimpled smiles; upon others death stamped looks of agony and horror that spoke the inexpressible Ian guage of the soul while struggling with death. Most of the bodies recovered at this place were Catholics, and around their necks hung emblems of their ra- ligiou. The attire and features of a ma jority showed them to De of the lowly class, yet there were many bearing evil dence If culture, refinement and pros perity.