Welcome back, everyone, to 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories, and Mysteries Podcast.

This is your host, John Haggadorn.

Today, Part 1 of the 1889 Johnstown Flood, Heroes and Survivors.

Floods aren't usually so dramatic and all inspiring as tornadoes, but they're even more destructive of life.

The Johnstown flood of 1889, however, was dramatic and even spectacular.

So swiftly did it come, and so certainly could it have been avoided.

When the dam holding back Lake Connemak broke, it set forth the 75-foot wall of water,

which destroyed 2,235 lives within minutes, swept away tens of millions of dollars worth of

property, worth nearly half a billion dollars today, and carried unutterable grief into countless

what had been happy homes. This was 1889. There was no radio,

no internet, no sirens to warn of the millions of tons of rushing water which surged on

when the dam broke, flattening and carrying away town after town along Pennsylvania's deepest and

longest gorge, known as the Connemoc Valley.

Johnstown, PA, the largest of these towns, was totally destroyed within 15 minutes by the rushing

debris-filled waters. When the South Fork Earthen Dam, lying at the top of the Connemoc Valley,

gave way to the rising waters.

All hell descended on the valley and the people below.

Lying in that narrow valley were eight villages, aggregating 50,000 to 80,000 inhabitants.

The largest of the eight, Johnstown, being situated at the lower end, with about 25,000 inhabitants. Far up in the mountain, 300 feet above the

chief village of the valley, hung a huge body of water. As nature had designed it, this had been a

small lake with natural outlets, which prevented it from being a menace to the valley below.

But the hand of man sought to improve the work of nature. An immense

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