The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-07-03
THAT DEAF#-DEAbNa WAVE.
It's Velocity, Its Appearance and the
Gust of Wind That Preceded 1t.
Frona the 81. Loais GIobe- Democrat.

From the st. Louis Globe-DemOcrGt.
The velocity Of the wave is an interest
ing subject of inquiry. The information
upon this point is in some respects puzzling.
Young Park, the engineer OF the South
Fork lake, stood by the dam and saw the
water go over the crest and eat out the
lower side of it. He says tbe- water COM
msnced running over at o'clock in the
afternoon. and That the dam gave way at 3
o'clock, having Sustained this wearing
away process for tgso hours The clocks IN
JohnStown show that the water reached
there at 407. The wave then was an hour
in traversing the twelve or fourteen miles
of narrow valley TO the place where it did
its greatest destruction. The fall
in that distance is about $50
feet. The velocity varied. 1t was not so
rapid in the upper part Of the valley. The
people at South Fork, the first settlement
in the way, escaped without exception.
The losses of lifewere comparatively small at
Mineral Point and at Conemaugh, but when
the wave reached the latter place its veloc-
ity was tremendous. From there to Johns
town the wave had a straight course, and
it moved with a speed which can only be
estimated by comparison. The whistles of
the engines gave the alarm. People looked
up the valley, saw a black mass coming
straight toward them, and tried to run up
mounted the stairs almost as fast as the
people did. AT least that is what many
claim as their experience.
The railroad men VINO saw the wave from
the tops of cars and from the hills at vari-
Gus points quite generally agree in descrip-
ton, which gives the movement the charac-
ter Of a succession of checks and rushes
They say that the vast load of trees, houses,
earth and other wreckage which the wave
wi r do fn
form dozen times on the way down.
Coming to a place where the valley sud-
denly narrowed the mass OF timbers and
trees would be crowded and would slow up
Behind the dam the waters would back up
until the pressure became 600 much, and
then the mass would go out with a great
rush. Foreman Kelly of the Pennsylvania
road, said one OF these temporary checks oc-
Cured near COnemaugh. The water was
thrown back and the spray dashed forty
feet high. The whole surface back of
the moving dam surged and boiled
But the check was only for few
moments. Then the mass let go and moved
straight down the valley, striking Johns
town squarely in the center, crossing
through the heart of the city and plunging
over Stony creek and into the South Side
before its impetus was again checked.
Foreman Kelly thought the center of the
wave was at least 10 feet higher than the
outer edges. This series of checks of the
wave on the route down is the only thing
which viii account for the length of time
occupied in the passage from the dam to
Johnstown. The speed was much greater
than fourteen miles an hour while the wave
was moving. If there had been no holding
up, the route would have been traversed in
half the time it was, but the force could
have been hardly more destructive.
William I)a Wis The gent q ,OOapauCh
observed what others noted, the rolling I'd
boiling and grinding movement. The
water was carrying a great load, but the
logs and other objects were being continu-
ally tossed above the surface as if the mass
was full of life.
Another phenomenon which many saw
was the wind just ahead of the wave. That
wind, Foreman Kelly said, actually moved
houses from their foundations before the
wave reached them. This explains, in some
degree, the declarations of one class of eve
witnesses who saw the wave go by while at
its greatest velocity. These insist that
there did not seem to be any water in front
of the wave. The front, according to their
description, was a rolling collection of
trees, rocks, houses, timbers, cars, earth
grass, and everything else moving down
the valley, with a great lake pushing be-
hind it. OF such appearance was the front OF
the wave, they say, until the valley widened
at Woodvale, and there the water came
forward and mingled with this moving
dam, and the whole mass, without any re-
gard to the rivers channel, plunged through
JOhnstown-at the same time a hurricane
an avalanche and flood, with all the de-
structive powers of each{