Year: 1874

World, describing the disaster at
Pittsburgh, says:


Instantly, as it seemed to some, the
air was filed with water. The flashes
of lightning were so continuous that for
half an hour the atmosphere was ablaze
with light, but impenetrable to the eye
by reason of the wells of rain. Down
in the low districts of Pittsburgh people
heard the water smashing through the
streets. They had often heard it in q
heavy shower, and went to bed calmly
enough, only expecting to find one or
two impossible thoroughfares in the
morning and new tax bills to pay. 1t
was Sunday night and church time, and
the churches had their usual rainy
night audience. The thunder and
lightning were severe enough to some
what interrupt the services, but in
Pittsburgh, and, for the most part, in
Allegheny City, people went home
through the soaking streets and went to
bed unconscious that anything had
happened. What had happenedP In
half an hour after the storm burst, and
while the congregations were at prayer,
up in the miserable hollow path made
fit for the food, the food had come and
risen to its height. The ragged, steep
hills poured at every rod torrent of
rain-water and its wash of mud, red
and yellow, straight down, Where the
country was open every seam in the
hill was torrent where it was built
upon every alley-way leading down the
hill-sides became a channel for the
waters. The ill-fated people along
those two fatal roads listened to the
rain and feared nothing. A freshet in
the run was o thing unknown, and
much less was it suspected that the
avenue would become river. But was
it the rain and nothing else that roared
so loudly, and only the thunder that
was rumbling so sullenly and fercely
It was the rise of the waters that, ere
their noise could be distinguished from
the noise of tie storm, had swept into
the channels and cut off retreat, now
from those at the upper end of the


fumes, and now it was only minute


from those halfway down to the city.


In the heart of the city itself, along


both the converging routes, the waters


found the little, unpainted houses set


in more thickly as they came along.


Further up some people hurried to


the hills and escaped, and some clung


to their houses, even, and escaped.


But here the food came before the


news of the flood, and announced itself


by sweeping in at the doorways and tell


ing the people that it had trapped them


wholly, for the only escape was by


flight, and fight one way was cut off by


the torrent, while fight the other way


by the houses themselves, set back to


back in close array, and with the water


now at the sills of their second story


windows, and now rending their walls


asunder was equally impossible. II


even these immense masses of water


had had an open pathway they might


have gone off harmless or have descend
ed upon the houses below with force


that could have been borne, but along
the run they tore up plank road, and


beat down the nearest houses with the
timbers and piled up the broken wood
with stones and mud into dam. Across
the narrow channel above the dam they


rose till through sheer weight they
broke it down, and then it was lake


and not gorged creek, that was toss
ed upon the UNCONSCIOUS people below


This was repeated in the avenue and
in both streams, dam after dam, eacE


larger than the last, was formed and
broken momently. That explains the
ruin which to-day is attracting to the
now empty beds of the two streams sc
many sight-seers. 1t explains also why
seventy-five dead bodies have been
found broken and buried in the mud,
and under the stacks of splintered tim
bers just below the fatal hollow where
, these two streams met.


The food came in the morning a
Mill river valley here it was in The
night, and in the darkness and horror
of terrible thunder storm. There the
man who would save his wife, the moth
er who would save her children, coult
at least see the point of safety, if tx
reach it was possible. Here they coulG
see nothing, and rushed out as if blind


fold, into what had been the streets o.
city, changed in the dark into high
ways of destruction.


The gas-works even were upset, anC


the dull light of the streets was turned
into darkness. At Mill river there


was breathing space between the VII


lagos. Here it was one block of houses


with the streets turned into torrents al
at once. Then the two raging streams
: laden each with great burdens of tim
: bers met where Chestnut, Center ant
, O'Hara streets come together. The,
came together with the heaped-uI


debris of each, nearly at right angles


They were eight and ten feet deep, bu
, when they met up went the water in {
burst thirty feet high, and down i
: came over the double dam of flood
, wood, broke right across O'Hara stree
at right angles, sweeping three houses


side by side utterly away, and then
"thank God, at last the worst hae
been reached, spread out into on opel
J meadow, made for the river up in the
run, and dug out the sewer and burst i
to pieces. Here there was another
sewer leading to the river, and this i
broke through and sucked utterly DIR,
before it passed on to the Allegheny
where it at last plunged into the river
| swamping an unlucky barge at th,


shore. It bored great holes into thu
clay, which it had scraped bare of th,
rich rcd alluvium, and left behind it il
the flat stocks of timber half buried il
mud, with too many dead human bodie