The Johnstown Flood

Human societies have often anticipated major disasters. There have been prophets and omens, engineering stress studies, and just a gut feeling that things are about to go wrong. People have often had the propensity to fear the worst but hope for the best. Many pray to the almighty to protect them from danger. Others put their trust in professionals, experts, or elected officials. In the back of their minds, many think it could never happen to them. In the case of the 1889 Conemaugh dam burst and Johnstown Flood, the potential for disaster was a common unspoken fear for many years before the disaster, and the disaster itself was a dreadful manifestation of those nightmares. To tell the full story of the Johnstown flood--with not a single detail excluded--there is no better historian than David McCullough. McCullough brings all the drama of May 31, 1889 to life, focusing on a wide range of characters from the blue collar residents to the wealthy Pittsburgh steel barons to the railroad operators, reporters, and rescuers that stormed in afterwards. From these accounts comes a story of post-flood mania just as dramatic as the flood itself--perhaps the first media blitz in this history of the nation covering a scandal akin to the OJ Simpson trial. The wealth of information in the book may leave the novice history reader overwhelmed, but the patient are rewarded with a story of a flood disaster that has yet to be matched in American history. The pre-flood exposition sufficiently leads up to the disaster in about 60 pages before the narrative reaches the night before the flood. The point of view jumps quickly between different characters and scenes, from the people of Johnstown to the railroad to the building of the dam and consequential founding of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Many of the common themes of the late 19th Century are woven into the story and shown to have contributed to the disaster. The rapid change from canals to railroads forced the state of Pennsylvania to abandon its massive canal project and sell the dam, thus taking it away from the inspection of professional engineers. The growing divide between Gilded Age millionaires and their manufacturing employees existed--this was mostly a quiet resentment, but McCullough astutely notes the subtle signs of trouble. The almost annual spring floods brought paranoia to some in Johnstown, although with unqualified officials sent to inspect the dam. The reader will be most astonished to learn that the dam broke previously, in 1862, as part of a decades-long period of neglect and mismanagement. The actual description of the flood and the immediate aftermath consumes the majority of the book. McCullough uses an event-based point of view. The storyline is generally chronological, but because of the wealth of information and accounts, most accounts are examined in their entirety at once, including post-storm interviews and author commentary. Only the most detailed and significant stories are revisited at later times. Some readers may find that this method sacrifices some of the drama and human connection to the story, as the book does at times read a little like an official report. At the same time, the wealth of context and analysis is what makes The Johnstown Flood such a remarkable disaster book. There were numerous highlights from the flood itself, but the picture of the wall of water itself was most marvelously described. It is easy for accounts of the water to be distorted, as most eyewitnesses would have seen the water in a moment of sheer terror, while reporters would have been apt to exaggerate the size/magnitude of the flood. McCullough puts the whole event in perspective, detailing each turn the water took on its journey to Johnstown, the height and speed of the wall at varying times, and the black "death mist" that hovered in front of it. (McCullough, 146) The amount of debris behind the water was most amazing, as it clogged the path at times and brought the flood to a momentary standstill, before rushing forward with newfound momentum. A second highlight was the quick organization of the townspeople after the disaster. With the railroad washed out, people recognized that help would be slow to arrive, so they held town meetings, elected leaders, and started the recovery and cleanup immediately. The lack of looting, epidemics, or general lawlessness after the disaster is a credit to their leadership skills. Help did eventually arrive, along with newspaper reporters who literally walked on foot through the night to be the first on scene. The cleanup became a pivotal moment for Clara Barton's Red Cross, which gained legitimacy and later showed up in Galveston in 1900. The most remarkable aspect of this work is McCullough's ability to sort through a wealth of primary sources and tell a comprehensive story that leaves little to doubt. His long and detailed description of the media circus that followed the flood is as fascinating and compelling as the flood itself. The media was guilty of greatly exaggerating statistics such as the death toll, stereotyping Hungrarians as thieves and rapists, and faking at least one photo. "The phrase `no pen can describe . . . ` kept cropping up again and again, but the pens kept right on describing." (McCullough, 219). There were articles of all types--tragic stories on the line between fact and fiction, pure Victorian sentimentality toward the dead, and scathing damnations of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Many important themes of late 19th Century culture converge in these newspaper articles. Although the Progressive Movement had yet to arrive, its roots were already seeded at the time of the flood in 1889. Some readers may decide that McCullough strays too far away in Johnstown in the aftermath section. The media storm appears to be unprecedented both in scope and in negligence of facts. However, firsthand accounts of the flood were bound to be distorted and exaggerated as well. To its credit, the book is unequivocal about what actually happened and why, without descending too far into academic prose. The newspaper accounts do go on for too long compared to the rather abrupt ending with relatively few details on the legal proceedings or long-term rebuilding of the valley. McCullough is famous for his ability to immerse the reader in the tragedy, and the glut of second-hand newspaper accounts pulls away from the tragedy and into an outsider's perspective coming from the media. McCullough does not speculate on the meteorological causes of the disaster, except that rainfall was above normal throughout the spring, peaking heavily in the overnight hours before the disaster. As a meteorologist, I can confidently hypothesize that the disaster was almost certainly the work of a stationary front, with at least one mesoscale convective complex (MCC) forming in the Great Plains and tracking eastward along the front. An MCC is defined as a long-lived group of thunderstorms that propagates eastward as an organized system. MCCs are strongest in the overnight hours, fed by a nocturnal low-level jet which advects moisture northward from the Gulf of Mexico. The heavy rains the night before the dam break were from an MCC, with the front focusing additional precipitation in the region. The front likely lingered for several days after the flood, resulting in the continued cloudy conditions noted by McCullough. A similar setup caused severe flooding in Johnstown in 1977, which has been documented by several academic papers (e.g. Kirk, 2003). Most important to the theme of The Johnstown Flood is that the meteorological conditions were unusual but not especially anomalous. The book notes that the rivers topped their banks virtually every year and poured into the streets of Johnstown. The difference in 1889 was that civilization had detrimentally altered the natural ecology of the Conemaugh Valley. Deforestation of the valley hills and the narrowing of river channels helped to increase the severity of any heavy rainfall. McCullough mentions these issues early in the book and then revisits them with a harsh criticism of Johnstown leaders at the end. The citizens frequently witnessed spring floods, yet did nothing to prevent or even mitigate them. They were nervous about the dam but they trusted that the wealthy leadership had their best interests in mind. The flood was not an "act of God" like a mighty tempest. There was abnormally high rainfall, but without man's attempts to control nature, there would have been no disaster. This was a failure of human technology and human trust--an inability by all parties to understand that while technology had greatly advanced by the Gilded Age, it had not advanced to the point where it was immune to the workings of nature. This was McCullough's first book and it set the stage for a tremendous career. Its style is strikingly familiar to his later works--his prose flows almost flawlessly and leaves the reader longing for more at the end. Despite being a disaster book, the focus is generally on the positive side of humanity: the town's quick post-storm organization, the outpouring of charity from across the world, and the heroic acts and survival stories of individuals. I would have liked to see more on the legal aftermath and a few less tangents earlier in the book--there is a need to create cultural context but McCullough is unnecessarily showing off his research by adding lists of obscure names that only appear once or twice. However, the exhaustive detail does pay off, making this book an absolute must for anyone interested in natural disasters. [...]

Let's face it, we all know what happens. However David McCullough is Johnstown Flood reads more like a novel than history. It is a well crafted book with lots of detail and underlying scholarship. Any student of history should find the book appealing. What strikes me about this book ( I read it January 2022) is how little humanity a has changed. The rich and powerful are able to escape responsibility. The working class are trod upon. Immigrants are vilified and blamed for acts that never occurred simply because they were different. The Johnstown Flood could be an allegory for Covid-19. The characters have different names, but many of the outcomes are the same. As is often said, history repeats itself. I would recommend this book for anyone. It is not a dry s hola fly tome, rather a fast moving recounting of a tragic event. I think there are lessons to be learned from the author.

Awesome writing by America’s narrative nonfiction master, David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize - winning author of John Adams and Truman and recent bestseller, the Wright Brothers (see my review of 2/17/2016) relates the horrible details of America’s worst disaster of its time, the Johnstown Flood. The first part of the book was a little laid - back (it’s almost sacrilegious to say that), but it was necessary to give the reader the background of The South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club and its Pittsburgh millionaires and the mostly common folk of Johnstown located fourteen miles down the mountain from the private club’s mountain Lake and dam. The second part chronicles the bursting of the dam on May 31 1889 and its release of 14.5 million cubic meters of water on its fourteen mile trip down the mountain, wiping out everything on its way to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This middle section was written with so well, and so exciting, that I thought it was fictive writing. That’s why McCullough is known as the maestro of writing nonfiction that reads like fiction...great job. This is the book that turned around the career of another favorite writer of mine, Erik Larson (I’ll talk about him in my comment section). Anyway, the third part of this book covers the massive cleanup effort, the Press coverage, the arrival of Clara Barton and her American Red Cross, and the various failed litigations against the millionaires on the top of the mountain. “Not a nickel was ever collected through damage suits from the South Fork Fishing and Hunting club or from any of its members. Even though a later engineer report on the dam said, “the job had been botched by amateurs.” The club never thought they did anything wrong after they bought the resort and dam. “The club people took it for granted that the men who rebuilt the dam - the men reputed to be expert in such matters - handled the job properly. They apparently never questioned the professed wisdom of the experts, nor bothered to look critically at what the experts were doing...even though anyone with a minimum of horse sense could, if he had taken a moment to think about it, have realized that an earth dam without any means for controlling the level of water it contained was not a very good idea.” 2,209 innocent people died because of the club’s cavalier attitude. Let’s go over some of David McCullough’s best passages from his historic book. “The storm had started out of Kansas and Nebraska, two days before, on May 28. The following day there had been hard rains in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Trains had been delayed, roads washed out. When the storm struck western Pennsylvania it was the worst downpour that had ever been recorded for that section of the country...estimated that from six to eight inches of rain fell in twenty - four hours over nearly the entire central section. On the mountains there were places where the fall was ten inches.” “By the start of the 1880’s Johnstown and its neighboring boroughs had a total population of about 15,000. On the afternoon of May 30, 1889, there were nearly 30,000 people living in the valley...much would be written later on how the wealthy men of Johnstown lived on high ground, while the poor were crowded into the lowlands.” “Year in, year out men were killed in the mills (Johnstown was a big factory town), or maimed for life. Small boys playing around the railroad tracks that were cut in and out of the town would jump too late or too soon and lose a leg or an arm, or lie in a coma for weeks with the whole town talking about them until they stopped breathing forever.” Can this man write or what? I’m using all of his quotes to do my review to illustrate his genius. “So far it had been a good year. Except for the measles the town seemed pretty healthy. Talk was that it would be a good summer for steel. Prices might well improve, and perhaps wages with them, and there would be no labor trouble to complicate things, as there would probably be in Pittsburgh.” “When the rain started coming down about four o’clock, it was very fine and gentle, little more than a cold mist. Even so, no one welcomed it. There had already been more than a hundred days of rain that year, and the rivers were running high as it was. The first signs of trouble had been a heavy snow in April, which had melted almost as soon as it came down. Then in May there had been eleven days of rain.” About five o’clock, the rain stopped. “About nine the rain began again, gentle and quiet as earlier. But an hour or so later it started pouring and there seemed no end to it.” Meanwhile, the man - made Lake Conemaugh (the Johnstown people called it South Fork dam) was starting to swell. The dam was 72 feet high, 900 feet long and the lake covered 450 acres and was 75 feet deep in spots. The lake water was estimated to be twenty million tons as it swelled higher...fourteen miles above Johnstown. “The construction technique was the accepted one for earth dams, and, it should be said, earth dams have been accepted for thousands of years as a perfectly fine way to hold back water.” “As far as the gentlemen of South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club were concerned no better life could be asked for. They were an early - rising, healthy, hard - working, no - nonsense lot, Scotch - Irish most of them, Freemasons, tough, canny, and, without question, extremely fortunate to have been in Pittsburgh at that particular moment in history. They were men who put on few airs. They believed in the sanctity of private property and the protective tariff. They saw themselves as God - fearing, steady, solid people, and, for all their new fortunes, most of them were.” While reading this book, I never got the idea that the millionaire industrialists (that owned the private club on top of the mountain) were irresponsible or derelict (well maybe a little), but they just didn’t think of the possibility of the dam failing. Why would they? Do you think club members like Andrew Carnegie or Andrew Mellon would ever think that a historic two day pouring rain would break their dam? Would it even cross their minds? As a matter of fact, the recently hired engineer, John G. Parke, Jr., did his best to warn the people down in the valley, as the rain came in sheets, and the water level rose to a dangerous level in the lake. But most of the people he encountered in the valley towns below didn’t believe him. It was previously said for many years that the dam would break. It was like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, in other words, another false alarm...not this time. “When the dam let go, the lake seemed to leap into the valley like a living thing, roaring like a mighty battle, one eyewitness would say. The water struck the valley treetop high and rushed out through the breach in the dam so fast that, as John Parke noted, there was a depression of at least ten feet in the surface of the water flowing out, on a line with the inner face of the breast and sloping back to the level of the lake about 150 feet from the breast.” “Parke estimated that it took forty - five minutes for the entire lake to empty.” Although this story is a matter of history, I’m going to stop my review here. Do yourself a favor, if you haven’t read a narrative nonfiction book before...start with this dramatic one.

I didn't know anything about this tragedy before I read this. I'd heard of the Johnstown Flood and even had a couple of chances to visit the town a while back and did not. There didn't seem to be an up side to tragedy tourism. But I'd heard of David McCullough, loved his books and here was one I hadn't read that is actually pretty short. Plus something about our national election this year gave me the stomach for a real disaster - over a century removed. I didn't know that Johnstown led the world in steel making and innovation, way before Pittsburgh. Number one in so many categories of production. I also didn't really know the geography of the town and I had no idea a lake and a dam 15 miles away were involved. It was interesting to hear of life before the flood. Scores of churches, stores, bars, organizations, institutions, a valley of 30,000 and town of 10,000. McCullough names names and tells of families and pets and farm animals and hum drum details that wouldn't really matter if it weren't for the pending disaster. And you know its coming. The rains, the river rising, the "once in a hundred years" weather event. And yet that's not the disaster. The disaster is the mind blowing precarious circumstance of an immense man made lake sitting up creek/river above a major town with a man-made dirt dam all that separates the lake from the people downstream. What happens next seems beyond the word flood. Water rising is one thing, but a fast moving 30 foot wall of debris containing trees, houses, factories, railroad cars - It was an inland tidal wave. The stories and human accounts conveyed felt surreal and unimaginable to me. And I could take a break from reading if I needed to, and I did. Yet so much joy coming through despite the unimaginable trauma. Survival stories. Unexpected family reunions. Real live faith. Heroic strangers. Then the incredible regional and national response. The immediate aid. Volunteers, organized charity, and of course crazy stories too. The sensationalized press coverage for weeks. The town that's mostly not there, trying to recover. It was a huge traumatic event on a national level. But trauma can heal right? I think so. If you click on Johnstown PA images today you'll see life and color and good things happening - even if the town is still economically challenged. After reading this book I do want to visit. And then there's the still troubling issue about the dam. It was part of a private "hunting and fishing" club for the rich. Actually including the super rich, many of the leading "Gilded Age" tycoons like Carnegie, Mellon and Frick. The troubling issue for me is not really that no one was held accountable in any way for the downstream damage. The rich got away with it. That's kind of that way it was. And still is. On page 263 McCullough sums up his interpretation of the collective thinking of most residents of Johnstown as . . "Surely those great and powerful men there on the mountain knew their business and were in control." That was their security against questioning, against reason. I wonder how often we still do this as American "regular people" - assume that because someone is rich and/or powerful or stationed in life above us - that we can be dismissive and ignore the danger signs that trouble our thoughts about them? What's good for them is good for us - right? Apparently few people seem to have ever even seen the dam, much less critically evaluate it. But ultimately everyone ended up seeing that lake one way or another.

Exciting, detailed account of the infamous Johnston Flood in Pennsylvania. Absolutely gripping story. It inspired me to visit Johnston to see where the flood occurred and how it damaged the town.

In typical McCullough fashion, this book is full of details and is properly researched to present all of the facts. Unfortunately, the details included detailed lists of the dead, missing and presumed dead which covered about 1/4 of the book. This was unfortunate in that I don't like reading lists however the minute by minute account of how people survived and how those that didn't perished was well documented. McCullough has a good book on the details of not only what happened during the flood but also the reasons behind it. A good read for those interested in the history of this country during the age of the Robber Barons.

A few years ago I took a train trip through Pennsylvania. During the trip the train passed through Johnstown. A porter as we passed through the town pointed out landmarks connected to the flood. They included the hill that survivors fled too and of course the stone bridge. He was very knowledgeable on the catastrophe and I asked him if he could recommend a book on it. He recommended this one. I was already familiar with McCullough having read books of his such as 1776, Truman and Path Between the Seas. I was hoping it would be on the level of those fantastic books. It isn't but it's really close. The first thing that impressed me with this book is the research. You can tell that McCullough spared no effort in his gathering every bit of information he could get his hands on. The first hand accounts are many in the book as well as ample documentation. You hear the stories of the survivors and the rescuers. He literally puts you in the moment to the point that you can imagine what you yourself might do faced with such a situation. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is the book is still McCullough's first book and while it's good he's still finding his sea legs in terms of organization and pacing of the story. In many cases in the book you have multiple stories mixed together at the same time where as today McCullough would have organized them for better pacing. Not a major thing by any means.

David McCullough is a successful, well-respected historical writer. The reasons for that success and respect are in this book. This is history as it should ALWAYS be written--the lives and times of real people, real families, real communities. McCullough invites readers to get to know the people affected by the Johnstown flood: their relationships; their understanding of the river; their beliefs about prosperity and responsibility; their business and daily activities; their motivation for acting as they did; their courage; their fear; their hopes; their dreams. For readers, the sense of suspense is almost unbearable--we already know that the dam will break, that the communities downriver will be virtually wiped out by one of the great tragedies in American memory. But, as the clouds gather (literally), McCullough takes the reader on a leisurely tour of the communities that face this great disaster, all unknowingly. To the minds of those in Johnstown and the other villages, this is just another somewhat boring and rainy, early summer day. McCullough's ability to find first-person testimony from a number of survivors gives his readers the homey details that make us feel we know these people--that they could be our own neighbors and friends, facing unimaginable horror only hours or minutes away. Once the dam breaks, McCullough's pace speeds up, but never so much that we lose track of the fact that this event happened to individual people. The actual event took less than a half hour from the time the dam breaks--it takes longer in the telling, because McCullough follows the experiences of many different individuals, families, groups. He tells the stories of astonishing courage, of wrenching anguish, of miraculous deliverance, of families torn apart--or united forever in death. He tells the stories of the after-effects of the flood: the days of searching for loved ones--or for, ironically, water to drink. He tells of the injuries and illnesses resulting from the flood, and from the subsequent exposure to the elements (since few structures remained, and the rains continued for some time). He tells of the responses of the local communities, and of the nation, whose newspapers kept up a steady stream of stories (of varying veracity) about the disaster. He tells of the valiant efforts of railroad workers to rebuild miles of destroyed track--and of the trainloads of caskets that arrived, day after day, once the rails reopened. The Johnstown Flood was a terrible event, which happened to real people. David McCullough honors those people by telling their stories in such a powerful way that we remember them. If all history were written in this style--the personal experiences of the people who lived it--Americans would understand our history, our origins, our roots much better than we do--and we would enjoy learning it!

Historical « re -enactement » of a remarkable local event in the United States of America in the 19th Century. Reads like a novel, but is underpinned by thorough and original research.

かなり評価が高そうなので、読んでみました。一種のパニックレポート的な 雰囲気があり、スリルもありますが、さてそこから何が導き出せて、今後の 対策で真剣に取り組んでいくにはどうすればいいのかを考える場合、今ひとつ参考になりそうな感じはしませんでした。アメリカでのハリケーンなどの被害に関連づけたかったのですが。私的には普通のレベルでした。でも、これは英語力の不足だからかも。

I've always enjoyed David McCullough's books. I just received this one (arrived on time and in perfect condition) and am looking forward to reading it.

This aspect of culpability, in fact, a lack of culpability, is quite striking throughout David McCullough's well-written and researched narrative. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, founded in 1879 by Benjamin Ruff, was a private, elitist and highly secretive summer resort for Pittsburgh's leading industrialists and financier's such as Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and the like, together with other less well-known personages, albeit still wealthy and influential, with a limited number of other members who were well connected. The club owned the South Fork lake, dam, clubhouse, cottages and some 160 acres of surrounding land. The lake and dam were located at an elevation of 1618 feet (493 metres) above Johnstown on the slopes of the Allegheny Mountain range, a distance of some 15 miles from Johnstown. In 1879, Benjamin Ruff purchased the lake and dam plus other property detailed above and created an exclusive club. A number of significant modifications were made to the dam under Ruff's ownership, most of which were instrumental in its collapse - but you need to read the book to appreciate these. The lake just prior to the dam collapsing was approximately 2 miles in length (3.2 km) and nearly a mile (1.6 km) at its widest point and had a water level of circa 72 feet (22 metres). The dam itself was 931 feet in width (284 metres) made from an earth core with rubble facing. On the 31 May 1889 the dam was holding back some 20 million tons (18,144 metric tonne) of water. Heavy rainfall had swollen the lake such that water was pouring over the top centre section of the dam, gradually eroding the earth until suddenly the dam gave way released the lake water, creating a wall of water travelling at 420,000 cubic feet per second (12,000 cubic metres per second) heading straight for Jamestown. Witnesses said the entire lake emptied in 57 to 65 minutes (estimates vary somewhat), the wall of water some 40 feet (12 metres) in height nearest the ground with the top layer cascading over the lower layer, which was subject to more ground drag resistance, reaching an estimated height of perhaps 100 feet (30.5 metres approximately). The devastation to property, possessions and the loss of life (many of those killed were never found) was catastrophic. But here's the strange part: no one was held accountable. Culpability didn't come into any of the subsequent reports or litigation cases, all of which failed. Why? Well, by the time of the dam collapsed, Benjamin Ruff was dead. The argument being put forward by senior club members was that Ruff was responsible for repairs to the dam and those wealthy members of the club placed their confidence in Ruff's professional experience and knowledge, when in fact, Ruff was not professionally qualified in any shape or form and some of his so-called repairs were nothing short of an amateur bodge, that proved ill-advised and highly dangerous. Had he lived he most likely would have been arrested and charged with manslaughter...who knows? As matters stood, there was no one on whom the local towns people or the state could pin the blame on. There were at least four major reasons why the dam failed, all of which are explained in clear prose in the book. This is a story encompassing stupidity, lack of professional engineering involvement and wealthy club members who put their misguided trust in Benjamin Ruff's knowledge and ability. It is an easy to read account of a disaster on a scale that is hard to imagine and was avoidable if it had been handled by professionals. Notwithstanding this, it is an excellent narrative, well worth reading. As for this reviewer, I'm now starting David McCullough's 'The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris' which also has the hallmarks of an enthralling read, so you may see another review shortly. Stay safe and enjoy your reading.

I enjoyed David McCullough's book. The style is very similar to that of Eric Larson's book Isaac's Storm: The Drowning of Galveston, 8 September 1900 . They both start the evening before as one man (in this case John G. Parke Jr.) notices the weather is somehow different this night than others. There is a premonition of disaster, although in McCullough's book, John Parke seems not to pay much attention. We then catch a glimpse of Johnstown on the eve of the flood and get a brief history of the place, a booming town heading into the twentieth century, not unlike Galveston, Texas, although the latter was much richer. When disaster does strike we've met some of the characters and so our connection and understanding are so much deeper and more human. This disaster is not just history, but it effected real people, whose lives changed forever. In McCullough's case, live interviews with survivors only strengthen this effect. I would say, however, that although I found the book interesting, I felt there was too much technical detail surrounding the dam and the flood itself. I would have liked to read more details of people's lives before, during and after the flood. It would have been nice for McCullough to include more details he had read in newspaper accounts and from talking to the survivors. All in all, though, I think it is an interesting read, and shows us how big money is often not accountable. A lesson we still need today.