The first survivors of the Johnstown wreck
who arrived at Pittsburg were Joseph and Henry Lauffer and Lew Dalmeyer.
They endured considerable hardship and had several narrow escapes with
their lives. Their story of the disaster can best be told in their
own language. Joe, the youngest of the Lauffer brothers, said:
"My brother and I left on Thursday for Johnstown.
The night we arrived there it rained continually, and on Friday morning
it began to flood. I started for the Cambria store at a quarter-past
eight on Friday, and in fifteen minutes afterward I had to get out of the
store in a wagon, the water was running so rapidly. We then arrived
at the station and took the day express and went as far as Conemaugh, where
we had to stop. The limited, however, got through, and just as we
were about to start the bridge at South Fork gave way with a terrific crash,
and we had to stay there. We then went to Johnstown. This was
at a quarter to ten in the morning, when the flood was just beginning.
The whole city of Johnstown was inundated and the people all moved up to
the second floor.
"Now this is where the trouble occurred.
These poor unfortunates did not know the reservoir would burst, and there
are no skiffs in Johnstown to escape in. When the South Fork basin
gave way mountains of water twenty feet high came rushing down the Conemaugh
River, carrying before them death and destruction. I shall never
forget the harrowing scene. Just think of it! Thousands of
people, men, and women, and children, struggling and weeping and wailing
as they were being carried suddenly away in the raging current. Houses
were picked up as if they were but a feather, and their inmates were all
carried away with them, while cries of ‘God Help me!’ ‘Save me!’ ‘I am
drowning!’ ‘My child!’ and the like were heard on all sides.
Those who were lucky enough to escape went to the mountains, and there
they beheld the poor unfortunates being crushed to death among the
debris without any chance of being rescued. Here and there a body
was seen to make a wild leap into the air and then sink to the bottom.
"At the stone bridge of the Pennsylvania
Railroad people were dashed to death against the piers. When the
fire stated there hundreds of bodies were burned. Many lookers-on
up on the mountains, especially the women, fainted."
Mrs. Lauffer’s brother, Harry, then told his
part of the talk, which was not less interesting. He said: "We had
a series of narrow escapes, and I tell you we don’t want to be around when
anything of that kind occurs again.
"The scenes at Johnstown have not in the least
been exaggerated, and, indeed, the worst is to be heard. When we
got to Conemaugh and just as we were about to start the bridge gave way.
This left the day express, the accommodation, a special train, and a freight
train at the station. Above was the South Fork water basin, and all
of the trains were well filled. We were discussing the situation
when suddenly, without any warning, the whistles of every engine began
to shriek, and in the noise could be heard the warning of the first engineer,
‘Fly for your lives! Rush to the mountains, the reservoir has burst.’
Then with a thundering peal came the mad rush of waters. No sooner
had the cry been heard than those who could rushed from the train with
a wild leap and up the mountains. To tell this story takes some time,
but the moments in which the horrible scene was enacted were few. Then
came the avalanche of water, leaping and rushing with tremendous force.
The waves had angry crests of white, and their roar was something deafening.
In one terrible swath they caught the four trains and lifted three of them
right off the track, as if they were only a cork. There they floated
in the river. Think of it, three large locomotives and finely finished
Pullmans floating around, and above all the hundreds of poor unfortunates
who were unable to escape from the car swiftly drifting toward death.
Just as were about to leap from the car I saw another, with a smiling,
blue-eyed baby in her arms. I snatched it from her and leaped from
the train just as it was lifted off the track. The mother and child
were saved, but if one more minute had elapsed we all would have perished.
"During all of this time the waters kept rushing
down the Conemaugh and through the beautiful town of Johnstown, picking
up everything and sparing nothing.
"The mountains by this time were black
with people, and the moans and sighs from those below brought tears to
the eyes of the most stony-hearted. There in that terrible rampage
were brothers, sisters, wives and husbands, and from the mountain could
be seen the panic-stricken marks in the faces of those who were struggling
between life and death. I really am unable to do justice to the scene,
and its details are almost beyond my power to relate. Then came the
burning of the debris near the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. The
scene was too sickening to endure. We left the spot and journeyed
across country and delivered many notes, letters, etc., that were intrusted
to us.
The gallant young engineer, John G.
Parke, whose ride of warning has already been described, relates the following:
"On Thursday night I noticed that the
dam was in good order and the water was nearly seven feet from the top.
When the water is at this height the lake is then nearly three miles in
length. It rained hard on Thursday night and I rode up to the end
of the lake on the eventful day and saw that the woods around there was
teeming with a seething cauldron of water. Colonel Unger, the president
of the fishing club that owns the property, put twenty-five Italians to
work to fix the dam. A farmer in the vicinity also lent a willing
hand. To strengthen the dam a plow was run along the top of it, and
earth was then thrown into the furrows. On the west side a channel
was dug and a sluice was constructed. We cut through a few feet of
shale rock, when we cam to solid rock which was impossible to cut without
blasting. Once we got the channel open the water leaped down to the
bed-rock, and a steam fully twenty feet wide and three feet deep rushed
out on that end of the dam, while great quantities of water were coming
in by the pier at the other end. And then in the face of this great
escape of water from the dam, It kept rising at the rat of ten inches an
hour.
"At noon I fully believed that it was
practically impossible to save the dam, and I got on a horse and galloped
down to South Fork, and gave the alarm, telling the people at the same
time of their danger, and advising them to get to a place of safety.
I also sent a couple of men to the telegraph tower, two miles away, to
send messages to Johnstown and Cambria and to the other points on the way.
The young girl at the instrument fainted when the news reached her, and
was carried away. Then, by the timely warning given, the people at
South Fork had an opportunity to move their household goods and betake
themselves to a place of safety. Only one person was drowned
in that place, and he was trying to save an old washtub that was floating
down stream.
"It was noon when the messages were
sent out, so that the people of Johnstown had just three hours to fly to
a place of safety. Why they did not heed the warning will never be
told. I then remounted my horse and rode to the dam, expecting at
every moment to meet the lake rushing down the mountain-side, but when
I reached there I found the dam still intact, although that water had then
reached the top of it. At one P.M. I walked over the dam, and then
the water was about three inches on it, and was gradually gnawing
away its face. As the stream leaped down the outer face, the water
was rapidly wearing down the edge of the embankment, and I know that it
was a question of but a few hours. From my knowledge I should
say there was fully ten million tons of water in the lake at one o’clock,
while the pressure was largely increased by the swollen streams that flowed
into it, but even then the dam could have stood it if the level of the
water had been kept below the top. But, coupled with this, there
was the constantly trickling of the water over the sides, which was slowly
but surely wearing the banks away.
"The big break took place at just three
o’clock, and it was about ten feet wide at first and shallow; but when
the opening was made the fearful rushing waters opened the gap with such
increasing rapidity that soon after the entire lake leaped out and started
on its fearful march of death down the Valley of the Conemaugh. It
took but forty minutes to drain that three miles of water, and the downpour
of millions of tons of water was irresistible. The big boulders and
great rafters and logs that were in the bed of the river were picked up,
like so much chaff, and carried down the torrent for miles. Trees
that stood fully seventy-five feet in height and four feet through were
snapped off like pipe-stems."