The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-06-05
The Great Disaster.

nlJuue anu pOrIrdylug JHe HOrrOrS VI
the disaster in Pennsylvania. On the
banks of a mountain stream among the
Alleghenies, in a picturesque valley
was, but few days ago, the city of
Johnstown, the location of the fur
naces and mills of vast iron manufac-
tory employing several thousand labor
ers. Eastwardly were thriving villages
and beyond them the south fork of the
Conemaugh river, which flows through
this valley to the Ohio. The fork flows
down a deep ravine, across which, in
the days when those regions were trav-
ersed by canal, a dam had been
thrown to store the waters to supply
the locks. When this reservoir was no
longer needed for its original purpose
it became the property of some wealthy
men of Pittsburgh, who made the To-
cality private summer resort. The
dam had been raised and the size of the
artificial lake increased until it became
body of water some three or four
miles in length, exceeding in places a
mile in width and one hundred feet in
depth. There this vast storage of
most destructive element lay, high
above the city and villages of the val
ley, a standing menace to their safety.
The danger impending above them was
recognized by the jewellers below, and
the owners of the reservoir quoted
their apprehensions of disaster by &C.
casional inspections of their property
by engineers of assumed experiences
and honesty. Thrice and four times
the warning had been given the in
habitants to beware of the awful ava
lanche of waters above them, and as
many times the warning had seemed to
be unwarranted. The masonry had
held true to its purpose, and indiffer-
ence had usurped the place of pru-
dence. The victims of impending ruin
had been lulled into false security.
There came time, last week, when
the floods descended in those mountain
gorges and every murmuring rivulet
became maddened torrent. A deluge
was precipitated upon the barrier, the
waters arose and overlooked their
bounds, the mass of solid masonry
yielded, and, with burst of thunder,
the multiplied waters shot down the
steep vale, swift as the bolts of heaven,
roaring, wrathful demon of destruc-
ton. The villages that lay in its track
men, women and children, mills, stores
and dwellings, were caught up and
swept along on its raging bosom. The
wreck of houses, trees and human be-
ings was arrested at Johnstown by a
stone viaduct of sufficient strength to
withstand even the concentrated rush
and fury of the torrent. The dam in the
mountains was suddenly repeated at
the bridge. Above the houses, above
the chimneys of the fated city the
waters surged, and in the twinkling of
an eye a city of many thousand people,
of great workshops, of school-houses
churches and happy homes was blotted
out of existence. Destruction so APP
palling, so widespread, so complete
is found only in the great historic catas-
trophies whose fame has been per-
petuated by literature and art. Below
Johnstown, westerly, extend other COM
munities, on which the engulfng
flood rushed, repeating the ruin that
had marked its track since it was
launched from its lurking place among
the hills.
Our extracts from the press reports
of the disaster present vivid picture
of the destructive, the horrible, the
CHASTITY, the pathetic that attend SC
great a calamity. When the earlier
dispatches announced that a great
catastrophe had happened, that some
two hundred lives were lost, with 8
possibility that the number might swell
to thousand or more, it was believed
that strong element of the sensa
tional was in the dispatches; but wher
the real magnitude of the affair came
to be understood, and the number Of
the dead was rising among the thou
sands, the feeling was that the even
was beyond the power of eXaggeration
that sensation palled before the awful
facts of the visitation. The region il
veritable valley of death. The deat
are stranded on the shores, lodged il
tree-tops, lie piled in shoals and eddies
half submerged in the receding waters
or covered with the mud of the inunda
ton, and hundreds are so deep below
the reach of the spade of the explorers
that only Gabriel's trump shall reacl
them.
The basest element in human natur,
is exhibited in the plundering of tn,
dead, righteous indignation in the wratl
of man that outstrips the course of lega