Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-10-02
Austin and Johnstown.

In some respects closely parallel1ng
the Johnstown flood of 1852. the disaster
at Austin, Pa. Saturday was mercifully
less destructive and leaves the record
set by the tragedy of twenty-five years
ago standing as the worst in the history
of the failure of artificial dams. In one
respect the likeness between the two
catastrophes is highly significant. The
dam at Conemaugh lake had been I'M
der suspicion for ten years prior to the
break and the inhabitants below in the
villages OF Conemaugh and Johnstown,
with the latter's suburbs, were in a
perennial state of fear At Austin the
dam was also gravely questioned 1t
had, indeed. been practically condemned
by engineers, though not officially and
with such formality as to force remedial
action.
Now that hundreds of lives have been
destroyed by flood and fire at Austin a
rigid inquiry will be instituted to deter
mine the responsibility. What a COM
mentary upon the inadeQuacy of even the
civilized modes of government! An arti-
fetal lake held in leash above populous
community by a dam known to engineers
to be weak and suffered by the authorities
10 remain on the strength of repairs that
proba bly, any disnterested expert would
reject as inadequate: Yet there is no
my stery about the cause of this toler-
ance. The dam is owned by a wealthy
corporation The largest stockholders
were men of influence in the neighbor-
hood. Doubtless they were in control
of political affairs. To the lasting shame
of American institutions of government.
jS 81 n no inn olnpd hr
who knows how such things go in an in
were exerted to stay the hand of the
law from interfering with the continued
use of so dangerous d power plant.
There will, of course. be some satisfac
ton in prosecutions that will punish
those who disregarded the plain warn
ings given by experts and probably by
their own judgment that the dam was
weak. But this will not bring the dead
back to life. 1t will not fully establish
public confidence in the preventive eff
iicacy of the law to safeguard against
similar disasters in the future. In the
Johnstown case the dam was merely an
earthen wall without any core of mason
y or concrete. The dam that broke
Saturday was theoretically of substantial
CONSTRUCTION INT
years seem to have taught nothing de-
spite the advances in mechanical methods
of water impounding.
At present great movement is under
way in this country to conserve the
water power that has for generations
been going to waste in the river valleys,
and dams have been and are being C n
structed of various sizes at d rate never
before known. In many instances these
dams are so situated that in case of a
break d large number of people will be
in the direct flow of the waters In most
cases, in fact, the artificial lake lies
above settlement, for usually the power
distribution is away from the source in
the direction of the stream. 1t is in
cumbent upon every local, state and
federal official with any degree of author
iiy over these constructions TO apply the
tragic lessons learned often in the
past and establish a high standard of
security by causing the abandonment OF
every water wall that is not secure be
!ond peradVenture.