Johnstown Flood of 1889
The earth and rock-fill South Fork Dam (1), as originally designed and built 1838-1854, had safety features expected today, including a principal spillway inlet tower (3), principal spillway outlet (4), plus an auxiliary emergency spillway (2).
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On the morning of May 31, 1889, Elias Unger, the president of Pennsylvania’s South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, awoke from a night of heavy rain to an impending catastrophe. Just below his home, swollen by ongoing rainfall, the artificial reservoir of Lake Conemaugh appeared to be on the verge of overwhelming the notoriously leaky South Fork Dam impounding it.
Unger sent urgent warnings to nearby towns and rallied a crew to try to relieve the pressure on the dam by creating spillways, to no avail. An hour and a half after Unger ordered his men off the eroding dam, it collapsed, freeing 20 million tons of water to charge downstream.
The torrent plowed through the town of South Fork, destroyed the Conemaugh Viaduct and erased the village of Mineral Point, picking up houses, trees, debris and momentum. Railroad cars and miles of barbed wire were added to the churning mountain of debris as it rolled over factories in the town of Woodvale.
An hour after the dam’s failure, a 60-foot wall of water and debris smashed into the thriving 30,000-person community of Johnstown at 40 miles per hour. People who had settled into the upper floors of homes to wait out the floodwaters suddenly found their buildings uprooted and floating away. One telegraph operator said he counted sixty-three bodies in twenty minutes floating past his office.
Thousands of people were swept away in moments. The mass of debris continued downstream before getting clogged against the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Stone Bridge, forming a temporary dam that sent the water bouncing back upstream again. The mountain of debris piled against the bridge quickly caught fire. Dozens of people who had managed to cling to floating bits of houses were swept directly into a deadly inferno and about 80 people died.
When the floodwaters finally receded, 2,209 people had died — the deadliest single disaster in the United States at the time. Survivors pitched tents and assembled ramshackle shelters as they began the grim tasks of counting the dead and rebuilding the pulverized town.
A lawsuit was filed against the wealthy owners of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for failing to properly maintain the South Fork Dam, but failed because negligence could not be proven on the part of any individual — a disappointing ruling that would result in changes to liability laws in many states.
Rebuilding Johnstown took years—the bodies of some victims were not found until 20 years later. Although the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club failed to maintain the dam, members of the club successfully argued that the disaster was an “act of God.” This perceived injustice helped inspire the acceptance of “strict, joint, and several liability,” which supports the idea that a “non-negligent defendant could be held liable for damage caused by the unnatural use of land.”
Very interesting. I've heard about it since I was a child. But this is the first time, I can remember, reading or seeing pictures about it. Thanks!
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