Connecticut western news., 1889-06-12
AFTER THE FLOOD.
FIRE ONLYCAN PURIFY JOHNS. TOWNS DEATH-BREEDING
 RUINS.


 Precautions Against Pestilence-A
 Call for National Committee-A
 Woman Who Saw . Thousand
 ing the Recognition of the Dead
 The Dams Construction.
 The horror of 1t all is over now, and peo- pie talk more of the bravery and herosm of some of those who went down than of the terrible fate which has overtaken so many of the living in losing all that made life dear.
 Not only Johnstown but the whole Ale ghany Valley is threatened with pestilence; so the State Board of Health, with Dr. Lee at it's head, has now removed to Pittsburg, which will henceforth be it's field of opera tions. There the work of purifying the water can be done to far better advantage. Dr. Lee estimates that the bodies of at least 1O,- 900 animals have gone down the river and its tributary streams. It is fearful to con- template the result if they are not removed at the earliest moment. Therefore an agent of the Board of Health will be stationed in each one of the villages and every carcass, as soon as it is seen, will be brought to the
 
 duced to ashes, bones and all Consign- mcnts of rosin have been sent to each agent and that will kindle the kindly fires that may save peoples lives.
 Under blazing hot sun, and with an at- mosphere heavy with smoke, there has arisen everywhere terrible odor, the danger of which to the public health cannot be overes- timated. The doctors advise every one who can to leave the place.
 A committee consisting of James McMillen, Ior I, John D. Roberts and Dwight Roberts adopt ed this resolution:
 "The survivors of the flood are now and must be for some time wholly dependent upon issues to them of food and clothing, as there are no goods here except those brought by the Relief Committee, and no places in which commerce can be carried on. The agencies for making such distributions should receive grave consideration. It is the unanimous sense of the Committee that another commit. mittee should be appointed for this purpose, composed in part of citizens of this locality and of members appointed by the Governors of the States or by the Chamber of Commerce of the cities from which contributions have been received or in such other way as will give this agency Q national character and assure the country that it's most generous charity will be judiciously and fully applied to the relief of the victims of our unprece- dented calamity
 Edward Fisher, bright young lawyer,
 
 flood, and whose home was demolished, has committed suicide by shooting himself, and there are a number of cases of insanity among the survivors
 Mrs. Susan Stonebraker, with her three children, arrived at Camden Station, Balti- more, from Johnstown and was met by her brothers.
 "We lived at Millvale, just across the river from Johnstown," she said. "When the water rose higher and higher, We sought safety at O inI1, off hnu ,tr ,1, with full force, and I am sure some of .the occupants of the house were drowned. We all took blanks and foated down the stream as the waters rose 50 high in the house that we thought it unsafe to remain. saw babies in cradles floating along and one foated down as far as Allegheny City, about eighty miles, where it was rescued. Our house was the first to be dashed against the stone bridge and immediately after we were swept against it on our boards. l must have seen at least the wreck from 3.3O o'clock Friday afternoon until Saturday morning, when we were rescued. My husband, Joseph H. Stone braker, had several rlbs broken and is now | In the hospital. Before We were rescued the wreck took fire and had we remained a short time longer we would have been lost"
 At the morgue the bodies are all being en- balmed now the minute they are received. There is no lettering on the part of the un- dertakers. who sometimes come to the door 
 of fresh air. The sight of death has become % common now that crowds no longer daily there to feed their morbid taste. The first few days it was almost impossible to pass the street it was so thronged. Night and day the work goes on in that ghastly chamber When sunlight fades the ghastly grave robes are put on by lamplight, and the newly gar mented are laid away in their brown boxes, with a slip of paper on the outside telling who they are that lie within. A ghoul, for l. | represented that he was undertaker's as- | sistant; but it was evident that he was | thief and he was put under arrest. He was brought before Gen. Hastings and put to work for the day in company with half 8 dozen drunkards.
 | Mistaken Identiflcations.
 One of the most distressing features at Johnstown is the difficulty of identifying the blackened and disfgured bodies taken from the ruins. Many mistakes are made and | much confusion results.
 Bodies are not allowed to remain more than twenty-four hours at the schoolhouse | which is used as morgue. Survivors or people searching for lost friends pass in slow procession all day long through the building, scrutinizing each poor victim closely. As | soon as body IS recognized and claimed it Is removed and inferred, but the morgue Is always full.
 People distracted by grief claim bodies and, after they have taken them away, dis cover that they have made 8 mistake. Often the only means of identification is an article of dress or jewel. A woman, supposed to be Mrs. Margaret Davis, was taken away, but afterwards found to be Mrs. Masterson, and the body of man supposed to be Chris tian Fitzhavens, was buried, but another body, undoubtedly his, was found | And the necessity for immediate burial in many cases precludes the possibility of identification, and this will result in much litigation with life insurance companies.
 An Experts Testimony.
 There has been much discussion concerning the strength and method of construction o1 the dam through which the death dealing torrents of water forced their way. All who had any connection with the building or the maintenance of the dam have diligently en. deavored to foster theimpression that all that engineering science could do to make the struc ture secure had been done; that the disas ter was one that could neither be foreseei nor guarded against; that the awful calamity was to be accepted as the decree of an in scrutable Providence. The result of an ex- animation completed by two expert cngin eers, A. M. Wellington and F. F. Burt, the latter associate editor of the Engineering News, Of New York, tends to remove all faitf in the assertions heretofore strenuously in sisted upon.
 MT. Wellington states that the dam was ir every respect of very inferior construction and of kind wholly unwarranted by goot engineering practices of thirty years ago Both the original and reconstructed dam. were Of earth only, with no heart wall, bu only riprapped on the stopcs. The origna dam, however, was made in rammed anc watered layers, which still show distinctly il the wrecked dam. The new end great, added to it's stability but it was to all ap pearance simply dumped in like an ordinar, railroad fill. or if rammed. shows no evidence