Cambria County, Pennsylvania was never overpopulated with greatness. The descriptive writing of George T. "Tom" Swank of the Johnstown Tribune, however, is unsurpassed, in my opinion, by even Dickens in the English language. Swank made artful use of literature's tools, metaphor and simile, and, most powerfully, the technique of making animate inanimate objects that is a cardinal mark of great literature.This is taken from an editorial after.

He saw buildings melt like sugar in a fire and regarded the wave as some evil vital force.

It came like a thief, and was upon us before we were aware. Already when it reached us it had numbered the victims by the hundreds. Mineral Point and East Conemaugh were gone, a passenger train was engulfed. Woodvale was swept away. Conemaugh Borough was shaved off as if by the sharp surface of an avalanche; in a moment Johnstown was tumbling all over itself; houses at one end nodded to houses at the other end and went like a swift, deceitful friend to meet, embrace, and crush them.

Then on sped the wreck in a whirl, the angry water baffled for a moment, running up the hill with the town and the helpless multitude on its back, the flood shaking with rage, and dropping here and there a portion of its burden—crushing, grinding, pulverizing all. Then back with great frame buildings, floating along like ocean steamers, upper decks crowded, hands clinging to every support that could be reached, and so on down to the great stone bridge, where the houses, piled mountain high, took fire, and burned with all the fury of the hell you read about—cremation alive in your own home, perhaps a mile from its foundation; dear ones slowly consumed before your eyes, and the same fate your own a moment later.

Houses “nodded”; water, “angry,” “baffled”, “running”, “shaking with rage.” You can see all of that happening via Swank's pen.

No writing better.