1889...1936...
In 1977 it happened again. On July 19 severe thunderstorms from a system that originated in South Dakota five days earlier deluged Johnstown, Pennsylvania. At 2:35 am, July 20, the Laurel Run Dam (yes, another dam), an earthen dam (yes, another earthen dam), "moved away," sending 128,000,000 gallons of water--six times the volume of the South Fork Dam in 1889--down the valley towards Johnstown. The Tanneryville section of the city was hardest hit, 40 people were killed there, about 80 overall, a higher death toll than the 1936 flood.
My grandmother remembered the 1889 flood, she remembered being taken to a lookout over Johnstown and seeing a grand piano in the street. My parents remembered the 1936 flood; frequently when we went to Johnstown they would point out the high water mark lined on the sides of buildings.
And I remember the 1977 flood.
I had just graduated from college and was about to move to Boston when I saw a notice and volunteered to go to Johnstown to help--deliver supplies, go door to door to check on people, clean up. I have three specific memories. One was the mud. You can't believe it. Mud a foot or two deep. Everywhere. I remember there was a theater, maybe the same one Ms. Umbach mentions in her poem. The big development in the motion picture industry that year was "Surround Sound." Remember Surround Sound? On the marquee of this theater whatever movie they were showing was advertised as being in Surround Sound, like "Star Wars in Surround Sound." Somebody had changed the marquee to read "Mud Around," "Star Wars in Mud Around." I thought that was pretty clever, very apt.
When I got to Johnstown it was a few days after the flood and it was sunny and hot. There was
supermarket that had been flooded and it's meats were out in the street, I remember a turkey or big chicken and everything was beginning to rot and beginning to stink.
The mud was beginning to dry by the time I got there; it was still wet underneath but the top layer, I can still see it, was beginning to dry. And blow away. That was bad...It was bad but what else was the mud supposed to do? What were we to do? What did we do? I don't remember. There was a foot of mud in the streets and now all this dried mud in the air as dust. It was irritating everybody's eyes, our noses and throats, there was some dry coughing. I'm pretty sure we put on G.I. issued masks. And it was only going to get much worse. You get half or more of that mud airborne you're going to have vulnerable people choke to death. It was bad.
We went into houses to check on people. I remember going into one, it was dark, no electricity of course, and quiet. We were surrounded by silence. We called out, "Anyone home?" or whatever, and this old man came quietly around the corner. He startled me, he hadn't made a sound. He couldn't talk. He had a bandage on his throat, I can still see it flapping loose, he had had his voice box
removed and you could see the hole in his throat. He was agitated, he was all alone in the house, and was mouthing the words and was able to make some sounds intelligible to us, I don't remember what they were, but he didn't have to tell us what all the dust in the air was doing to a man with a hole in his throat. I remember going down into his basement. Mud. Feet thick. I don't remember what we did...The man's situation was so acute that we must have just gotten him out of there--Ah! I remember giving him water, the people had no water either, that was one of the things we were delivering. I don't remember getting him out of there though, I hope we didn't just bring him water
like we were ushers at a baseball game, the man would choke to death on the dust if we left him there. I hope we got him out of there. I don't remember if we started to shovel out his basement. All I remember is seeing that poor old man come around the corner in his dark, quiet house and being
startled and seeing the bandage on his throat flapping and the hole and thinking of the dust and seeing the terror in his eyes and putting my ear close to him to try to hear what he was saying.
Do you trust weather forecasts? No, right? Who does? Frigging meteorologists are never right. The National Weather Service guys in 1977 really--unintentionally but really--made a horrendous situation worse. Forget the forecast inability, in '77 they got their hindsight wrong. They said, you can still look it up, that the South Dakota storms that hit Johnstown were a once in 5,000 year occurrence.
:)
Once in 5,000 years. Ha-ha-ha. You fucking idjits this fucking place just got wiped out for the third time in 100 years! I can remember joking with my grandmother who lived to see all of the three major floods, "Gram, how old are you? You must be getting close to 15,000 years old according to the National Weather Service!" She laughed but I don't think she got it, she was hard of hearing.That breezy, boneheaded NWS report got a lot of play then and I think it discouraged the people of Johnstown. Johnstown never recovered from the '77 flood. Unlike after the Great Flood when the Cambria Iron Works owners told cheering workers they would reopen, unlike after the '36 flood when FDR came to Johnstown and sent the WPA in to raise the river banks and make Johnstown "flood free," a lot of businesses didn't reopen after 1977 and a lot of people moved away. They didn't trust the experts, not after the experts on the South Fork Dam, not after FDR's experts, and they damned sure weren't going to stay in Johnstown for 5,000 more years to see if the weatherman was right.
In 1977 it happened again. On July 19 severe thunderstorms from a system that originated in South Dakota five days earlier deluged Johnstown, Pennsylvania. At 2:35 am, July 20, the Laurel Run Dam (yes, another dam), an earthen dam (yes, another earthen dam), "moved away," sending 128,000,000 gallons of water--six times the volume of the South Fork Dam in 1889--down the valley towards Johnstown. The Tanneryville section of the city was hardest hit, 40 people were killed there, about 80 overall, a higher death toll than the 1936 flood.
My grandmother remembered the 1889 flood, she remembered being taken to a lookout over Johnstown and seeing a grand piano in the street. My parents remembered the 1936 flood; frequently when we went to Johnstown they would point out the high water mark lined on the sides of buildings.
And I remember the 1977 flood.
I had just graduated from college and was about to move to Boston when I saw a notice and volunteered to go to Johnstown to help--deliver supplies, go door to door to check on people, clean up. I have three specific memories. One was the mud. You can't believe it. Mud a foot or two deep. Everywhere. I remember there was a theater, maybe the same one Ms. Umbach mentions in her poem. The big development in the motion picture industry that year was "Surround Sound." Remember Surround Sound? On the marquee of this theater whatever movie they were showing was advertised as being in Surround Sound, like "Star Wars in Surround Sound." Somebody had changed the marquee to read "Mud Around," "Star Wars in Mud Around." I thought that was pretty clever, very apt.
When I got to Johnstown it was a few days after the flood and it was sunny and hot. There was
supermarket that had been flooded and it's meats were out in the street, I remember a turkey or big chicken and everything was beginning to rot and beginning to stink.
The mud was beginning to dry by the time I got there; it was still wet underneath but the top layer, I can still see it, was beginning to dry. And blow away. That was bad...It was bad but what else was the mud supposed to do? What were we to do? What did we do? I don't remember. There was a foot of mud in the streets and now all this dried mud in the air as dust. It was irritating everybody's eyes, our noses and throats, there was some dry coughing. I'm pretty sure we put on G.I. issued masks. And it was only going to get much worse. You get half or more of that mud airborne you're going to have vulnerable people choke to death. It was bad.
We went into houses to check on people. I remember going into one, it was dark, no electricity of course, and quiet. We were surrounded by silence. We called out, "Anyone home?" or whatever, and this old man came quietly around the corner. He startled me, he hadn't made a sound. He couldn't talk. He had a bandage on his throat, I can still see it flapping loose, he had had his voice box
removed and you could see the hole in his throat. He was agitated, he was all alone in the house, and was mouthing the words and was able to make some sounds intelligible to us, I don't remember what they were, but he didn't have to tell us what all the dust in the air was doing to a man with a hole in his throat. I remember going down into his basement. Mud. Feet thick. I don't remember what we did...The man's situation was so acute that we must have just gotten him out of there--Ah! I remember giving him water, the people had no water either, that was one of the things we were delivering. I don't remember getting him out of there though, I hope we didn't just bring him water
like we were ushers at a baseball game, the man would choke to death on the dust if we left him there. I hope we got him out of there. I don't remember if we started to shovel out his basement. All I remember is seeing that poor old man come around the corner in his dark, quiet house and being
startled and seeing the bandage on his throat flapping and the hole and thinking of the dust and seeing the terror in his eyes and putting my ear close to him to try to hear what he was saying.
Do you trust weather forecasts? No, right? Who does? Frigging meteorologists are never right. The National Weather Service guys in 1977 really--unintentionally but really--made a horrendous situation worse. Forget the forecast inability, in '77 they got their hindsight wrong. They said, you can still look it up, that the South Dakota storms that hit Johnstown were a once in 5,000 year occurrence.
:)
Once in 5,000 years. Ha-ha-ha. You fucking idjits this fucking place just got wiped out for the third time in 100 years! I can remember joking with my grandmother who lived to see all of the three major floods, "Gram, how old are you? You must be getting close to 15,000 years old according to the National Weather Service!" She laughed but I don't think she got it, she was hard of hearing.That breezy, boneheaded NWS report got a lot of play then and I think it discouraged the people of Johnstown. Johnstown never recovered from the '77 flood. Unlike after the Great Flood when the Cambria Iron Works owners told cheering workers they would reopen, unlike after the '36 flood when FDR came to Johnstown and sent the WPA in to raise the river banks and make Johnstown "flood free," a lot of businesses didn't reopen after 1977 and a lot of people moved away. They didn't trust the experts, not after the experts on the South Fork Dam, not after FDR's experts, and they damned sure weren't going to stay in Johnstown for 5,000 more years to see if the weatherman was right.
