Johnstown's Flood of 1889

Johnstown’s Flood of 1889 Neil M. Coleman Johnstown’s Flood of 1889 Power Over Truth and The Science Behind the Disaster Neil M. Coleman Department of Energy and Earth Resources University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA ISBN 978-3-319-95215-4 ISBN 978-3-319-95216-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95216-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947587 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Mara, Kaija, Erika, and Fiona Acknowledgments I wish to express sincere appreciation to Ms. Kaytlin Sumner, Archivist of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, for helping me access the wealth of archival material they collect and preserve for the history of Johnstown. Ms. Marcia Kelly assisted me with images of the viaduct trestle and the South Fork Dam breach. JAHA also maintains the 1889 Flood Museum, a short walk from the Amtrak station in Johnstown, and the Frank & Sylvia Pasquerilla Heritage Discovery Center on Broad Street. I also appreciate access to the microfilm records about the South Fork and Hollidaysburg dams maintained by the Pennsylvania State Archive. They have many records from the years of the Canal Commissioners, including the field note- books of the supervising engineers who built the South Fork Dam and the Eastern Dam near Hollidaysburg. I am most grateful to Musser Engineering, Inc. of Central City, Pennsylvania, and Professor Brian Houston (University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown) for their GPS analyses of key elevations at the South Fork Dam. The analysis of dam remnant elevations and former lake levels would not have been pos- sible without their contributions. Thanks to Mr. Timothy H. Horning, Public Services Archivist at the University of Pennsylvania. He provided valuable help in locating documents and images related to the John Parke family history and Parke’s classmates, as chronicled in Penn’s publications and archival files. Thanks also to Mr. Richard Gregory, author of “The Bosses Club,” for sharing some details about the Eastern Dam and for dis- cussions about the floods of Johnstown. I am grateful to Ms. Meike Gourley, Museum Assistant with the Historical Society in Beverly, Massachusetts, who helped research details about Leroy Temple. I greatly appreciate the help of Ms. Laurel Racine, Chief of Cultural Resources, who provided access to archival material about the Francis family in Lowell and for general information about the canals and tours provided by the National Park Service. Thanks also to the staff and management of the Johnstown Flood National Memorial for their educational and preservation efforts, and for their permission and assistance to do research in hydrology and geomorphology at the historic site of the South Fork Dam. Ms. Nancy Smith of the National Park Service located and vii viii Acknowledgments provided historic photographs of the South Fork Dam from the time the NPS first acquired the property. Very special thanks to my friends and colleagues, Stephanie Wojno and Nina Kaktins, for permitting the use in this book of material from our 2016 paper in the journal Heliyon. Ms. Wojno contributed numerous figures for this book and co- authored and greatly enriched Chapter 13 about “The Forgotten Dam” near Hollidaysburg. Recommended Reading Carnegie A (1920) Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie (with illustrations). Houghton Mifflin Co., New York and Boston, 385 p McCullough DG (1968) The Johnstown flood. Simon & Schuster, New York, 302 p Qing D1 (1998) “The River Dragon has Come! The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China’s Yangtze River and its People.” Thibodeau JG, Williams PB (eds) [see footnote] Sharpe EM (2004) In the shadow of the dam – the aftermath of the mill river flood of 1874. Free Press, New York 284 p Website of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association and the Johnstown Flood Museum; at http:// www.jaha.org/attractions/johnstown-flood-museum/flood-history/ Website of the Johnstown Flood National Memorial, National Park Service; at https://www.nps. gov/jofl/index.htm 1 Dai Qing is the daughter of a revolutionary martyr. As a journalist she was imprisoned for her writings about the Three Gorges Dam. She is now forbidden to publish in China but continues to advocate for freedom of the press, government accountability, and dam safety. I highly recommend her works. Prologue The literature of the Johnstown flood consists of several films and hundreds of arti- cles and books, most of which focus on the human tragedy, the horrors of the flood wave descending on Johnstown and its neighboring boroughs, scenes of mass destruction, and the heroism and suffering in the aftermath. The public will always be fascinated by the morbid and the macabre. Yet strangely, almost no quantitative science has been done on the 1889 flood, to search for the true cause of the dam breach that spawned the disaster. Perhaps there is a psychology of tragedy that causes professionals to turn away from analyzing terrible events in detail. But such analysis can save lives in the future, such as the engineering studies of the speed of collapse of the World Trade Center towers after exposure to impact and intense fire. The study of dam safety is crucial to our society. There are tens of thousands of dams in this country, some of which have been labeled high-risk dams. If they were to fail, the lives of hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands would be at risk. Sadly, the lessons of the Johnstown flood and other dam breach disasters have yet to be learned. In 1975 in China, runoff from torrential rains breached the Banqiao and Shimantan dams, causing the domino collapse of scores of smaller dams and levees below them. Hundreds of thousands perished in the flooding and its aftermath. Such tragedies have only one redeeming value – they serve as examples of events to antic- ipate and avoid – what to do and what not to do. They teach important safety lessons to individuals and society as a whole. The American Society of Civil Engineers (hereafter the ASCE) launched an investigation immediately after the 1889 flood. Three members of the appointed committee were among the finest hydraulic engineers in the USA. The breached dam was owned by the elite South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club of Pittsburgh. Some of its members were among the wealthiest industrialists in the nation. They had the power to influence the investigation and even the inner workings of the ASCE. It is unfortunate that even when public safety is at risk, power can overrule science and engineering. The fate of the ASCE investigation report is a tale of power over science. ix Contents 1 Introduction �� 1 1.1 The U.S. and the World in 1889 �� 3 1.2 Carnegie and Pitcairn �� 4 References �� 6 2 The Gathering Storm – “A Shower of Fishes” �� 7 2.1 The Coming Storm �� 8 2.2 Cloud Seeding!? �� 11 2.3 Regional Storm Damage �� 12 References �� 14 3 Early History of the South Fork Dam �� 15 3.1 The “Age of Canals” �� 15 3.2 Not Enough Water – A Need for Dams! �� 17 3.3 Design of the South Fork Dam �� 19 3.4 Building the Dam �� 20 3.4.1 Excavations for Dam Material �� 22 3.5 Decommissioning

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