Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-06-12
THEY WERE NOT ALL DROWNED, A Large Proportion Wore Crushed tt
 Denth In tho Wreckagc.

JoHNsTowN. Pa., June 12.-It Is the estimate of nearly every man here who has considered the matter, that 6 great majority of the deaths were due to other causes than drowning. Many place the proportion as high as 75 per cent, and any one who observed how the bodies of the dead were mutilated and torn, cannot but believe that this Is true es- innate. Ot the hundreds of bodies that are seen, there are comparatively few that were free from what must have been fatal cuts and bruises.
 Men, women and children, whose skulls had been fractured, or whose chests were crushed in. have been taken to the morgucs in great numbers. The people who were carried down by the bristling flood wcre wedged in with the timbers of h ,uses, and with trunko of trees, all carried along together at speed of nearly mile a minute.
 There was no lack of floating material to seize and for the time be safe from drowning, but the rushing mass of wreck ago struck hundreds of death-blows to those who were not engulfed.
 So thick was this mixture of human beings and rubbish thata gentleman who escaped from one of the trains which stood in Johnstown and who ran up the hill to place of safety, declared yester- day that, although he stood but a few feet above the wall of water, he did not see a single person floating along. ha1- ,zf hn har hut ba could not sec them. What he saw was black wall of water, from which 0 spray 1 rose to the height of many feet, and which was crested with rushing mass | of something or everything. Many of tho bodies that have been taken from the boiler houses of the Cam | bria Iron works bear marks showing that l death came to them from blows from | heavy articles. Most of these were swept 1 through the yard of the Cambria works, where were stored thousands of blooms | and ingots, which, being lifted by the water. dealt death hits right and left The toppling over of brick buildings, which were as so many children's block houses before tho terrific force of the l flood, killed hundreds outright. So then
 it Is probable that the majority of deaths
 were horribly violent deaths.
 | One peculiar action of the flood was
 that of clipping off and carrying away | portions of structures. A number ot l houses were thus treated. The rear of l one of the hotels was seized and torn of
 clean. Those in this part of the hotel l were lost. Those in the other part
 passed through that night of agony and l were saved.
 convent, to the westward, cover nothin g
 but the air and the ground fifty feet be-
 low. Before the disaster they pro-
 tected two stories. When the water
 struck the house all but these twelve
 feet stood the brunt. They were swept
 away.
 Half of dwelling house in Cambria
 city. y.stood in the path of the wave. The
 other half was not touched. This house
 looks as if a huge cleaver had been driver
 through the center from the roof to the
 ground. The exposed party was gone.
 There was left what had apparently been
 the wall of a sitting room. The paper
 was only damaged where the timbers
 had parted. Three pictures hang on the
 wall. Two are portraits. The third
 which is in the center, is a representation
 of the Saviour lying on sarcophagus.
 A relic hunter was just about to re
 move this picture whom the occupants o : the house saw him. They seized hin und handled him pretty roughly. A mem
 Der of the Fourth regiment rescued him