-Near 3:00 P.M.

Beginning about three in the afternoon of Memorial Day, unprecedented amounts of rain fell in the mountains [of Western Pennsylvania] for from twenty-four to thirty-six hours.

Deckert was not perfectly cool about it. Deckert had a Western Union operator call her office on the telephone and read them the contents of Wilson's "dam may possibly go" telegraph. (McCullough 97). Much too ambiguous a message to be rushed through in haste. ~Twenty minutes to break, much too late for Johnstowners to act on whatever they thought the message was advising them to do.