business blocks were, every
object has been utterly swept away with the exception of perhaps seven
scattered buildings. In their places is nothing but sand and heaps of
debris. Imagine that in the upper portion of this triangle the pathway
of destruction has been clearly cut. Along the pathway houses have been
torn to pieces, turned upside down, laid upon their sides or twisted on
their foundations. Put into the open space on the lower end of the
triangle the tents and the fires of burning rubbish and you will have
the picture of Johnstown to-day.

Unheeded Warnings.

The people had been warned enough about the dangers of their location.
They had been told again and again that the dam was unsafe, and whenever
the freshets were out there were stories and rumors of its probable
breaking. The freshets had been high for many days before that fatal
Friday. All the creeks were over their banks and their waters were
running on the streets. Cellars and pavements were flooded. Reports from
the dam showed that it was holding back more water than at any other
time in its history. A telegraph despatch early in the afternoon gave
startling information about the cracks in the dam, but it was the old
story of the wolf. They had heard it so often that they heard it this
time and did not care.

The first warning that the people had of their coming doom was the roar
of the advancing wave. It rushed out of the valley at four o'clock in
the afternoon with incredible swiftness. Those who saw it and are still
alive say that it seemed to be as high as an ordinary house. It carried
in its front an immense amount of battered wreckage, and over it hung a
cloud of what seemed to be fog, but was the dust from the buildings it
had destroyed. Straight across the river it rushed upon the apex of the
triangle. It struck the first houses and swept them away in fragments.
The cries and shrieks of the frightened people began to be heard above
the roar of the floods, and a few steps further the great wave struck
some unusually solid structure. Its force right in the centre was
already diminished. On these houses it split and the greater part of it
went on diagonally across the triangle, deflecting somewhat toward the
north and so on down to the stone arch bridge.

Nothing Could Withstand the Flood.

Wherever it went the houses tumbled down as if they were built of cards.
It was not alone the great volume of water, but the immense revolving
mass