Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1889-06-08
FLOODSWEPT.
A PENNSYLVANIA TOWN SWEPT
OUT OF EXISTENCE.
The Greatest Calamity the Country has
ever Known.

swept down the Conemaugh valley
in Pennsylvania, entirely destroying
Johnstown, a city Of $4,000 inhabi-
tants, and devastating hundreds of
other homes along the river for miles.
The daily papers have been devoting
many columns to the disaster for the
last week, without depicting one.
half of the horrors. The loss of life
can never be accurately known, but
is variously estimated from ten to fif-
teen thousand people. The dispatches
given below, while very incomplete
as to details, furnish some idea as to
the extent of the calamity:
DERRY, Pa, May 3l.-A flood Of
death swept down the Allegheny
Mountains this afternoon, and to-
night almost the entire city of Johns
town is swimming about in the rush
ing angry tide. Dead bodies are
floating about in every direction, and
almost every piece of movable tim
Der is carrying from the doomed city
corpse of humanity, drifting with
the raging waters God knows where.
The
DISASTER OVERLOOK JOHNSTON
about 6 o'clock this evening. AS the
train bearing the special correspond
ents sped eastward, the reports at
each stop grew moe appalling. AT
Derry a group Of railway officials
were gathered who had come from
Bolivar, the end of the passable por-
ton Of the road westward. They
had seen but a small portion of the
awful flood, but enoungh to allow
them to imagine the rest. Down
through the Packsaddle
CAME THE RUSHING WATERS.
The wooded heights of the Alleghe.
MES looked down in solemn wonder
at the scene of the most terrible de-
structfon that every struck the ro-
mantle valley of the Conemaugh.
The waters were rising when the
man left at o'clock at the rate of five
feet an hour. Clinging to improvis'
ed RATS constructed in the death
struggle from floating boards and
timbers, were agonized men, women
and children, their heartrending
shrieks for help striking horror tC
the breasts of the on-lookers. Theil
cries were of no avail. Carried along
at a railway speed on the breast O
this rushing torrent no human inge
nuity could devise a means of rescue
SANG HOLLOW, Pa, June 2, a
m.-The first accounts sent out of thu
Johnstown disaster are far below
the widest estimates placed upon
the extent of the calamity, and in
stead of 1000 or 5000 it is probable
the death list will reach S,000-man.
say 10000. 1t is now known tina
two passenger trains, two sections O
the day express on the Pennsylvania
Railroad, have been thrown into tn
maddened torrent, and the passenger
drowned. These trains were held a
JOhnstown from Friday at II a. IN.
and were laying on siding between
the Johnstown and Conemaugl
stations. The awful torrent cam
down the narrow defle between tn
mountains, distance of nine miles
and with fall of 800 feet in tina
distance, sweeping away the village
: of South Fork, Mineral Point, Wood
: vale and Conemaugh, leaving bu
one building standing, wooden mil
where but an hour before had stoo
hundreds, and dashing on with tn
: roar of a cataract and the speed of tn
$ wind upon the fair city at the foo
t hills. The great Gautier steel work
sat in this plane and the city belo'
D it, the railroad tracks bounding it {
the base of the mountains on tn
f north. Here the trains were stanC
n ing when the tide of water like
: catapult came down on them wit
: such resistless force that the heav
( trains, locomotives, Pullmans and a
4 were overturned, and swept dow
y the torrent, and were lodged again
the great stone viaduct along wit
forty-one locomotives from II
i Johnstown round-house, the heav
y machinery and ponderous FRAMEWORK
y of the Gautier mill, the accumulate
= debris of more than a thousan
e houses, furniture, bridges, lumbe
5 drift and human beings. The 10
e arches of the stone viaduct choked I
Is Immediately, and the water backC
II back over the entire level of tt
y valley upon which the city stood,
u the depth of what, from the waite
no