The Johnstown Flood of 1889

Aaron Miller

March 30, 2010

ABSTRACTJohnstown was an industrial town in Pennsylvania on a river downstream from a dam that had been built to help control the flow of water in a canal system that the state was building. About the time the dam was being finished, it was sold by the state because the canal system had become unnecessary because of the development of the railroad system in the state. The dam was abandoned, damaged, and finally was sold to Benjamin Ruff who wanted to make a club out of the lake that the dam could make if it were repaired. He hired a man with some experience in building railroad embankments, and repaired and modified the dam so as to accommodate the needs of the club. For years, the club was a beautiful place to escape and relax for its members until May 31, 1889. On that day, a massive storm dumped a record amount of rain on the area, and due to the way in which the dam was repaired and modified, water built up behind the dam and finally ran over it. About mid-afternoon, the dam finally gave way to the water, and the entire valley where Johnstown was located was flooded and destroyed. After the flood, investigations were launched, and found the deceased William E. Morris, the engineer who had originally built the dam, to be responsible. However, the investigators were not aware of all the facts. The real cause of the failure was the modifications to the dam after its initial construction. They were substandard, and made in an absence of knowledge about the dams design. Because of the failure, flood prevention measures were implemented in the Johnstown area, and the Johnstown inclined plane was built, saving many lives in floods that followed. The biggest effect on the actual practice of engineering was the change in liability law that occurred after the disaster, making more people liable for damages caused by modifications to natural land, such as a dam. This look at the Johnstown Flood of 1889 highlights the importance of engineering ethics and the catastrophic consequences that can result from the failure of an engineering project.

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TABLE OF CONTENTSAbstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 The Disaster .................................................................................................................................... 2History and Preceding Events ...................................................................................................................................2 The Flood ..................................................................................................................................................................5 The Aftermath ............................................................................................................................................................6 Investigation and Analysis ........................................................................................................................................7 Lessons ......................................................................................................................................................................8

Works Cited .................................................................................................................................... 9

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LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1: Original Dam Design....................................................................................................... 3 Figure 2: Reconstructed Section Design ......................................................................................... 4

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INTRODUCTIONJohnstown is a town in Cambria County, Pennsylvania about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. The Johnstown area has been the site of iron and steel working since the early 1800s because of the areas iron and coal deposits. The town also sits where the Conemaugh River is formed by the convergence of the Little Conemaugh River and Stony Creek. The Cambria Iron Company was created in the early 1850s to operate a few charcoal furnaces in and near Johnstown. After the Civil War, the expansion of the railroad provided a large market for the companys steel. Expansion of the companys main center of operations in Johnstown increased the size of the town, which reached a population of about 28,000 by the 1880s. Upstream from Johnstown, past the small town of South Fork on the Little Conemaugh River, was the South Fork Dam. Abandoned shortly after it was constructed, the over 72 ft high, 900 ft wide dam sat unmaintained and neglected for years until it was bought, shabbily repaired by a man with no experience in dam building, and sat like a ticking time bomb for years with many leaks and false alarms of collapse until May 31, 1889. On that day, the dam changed the lives of tens of thousands of people and the nation forever when the ill-repaired dam gave way and destroyed most of the Johnstown area in one of the worst engineering disasters in American history.

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THE DISASTERHistory and Preceding EventsJohnstown was a thriving industrial town from the 1850s though the 1880s, and was an essential part of the United States steel industry. The Cambia Iron Company was one of the largest steel producers in the world, and was based in Johnstown. The company owned most all of Johnstown and the surrounding hills, leasing the land to the residents of the town and other businesses. According to Willis Fletcher Johnson, who wrote a history on the Johnstown flood, most of the people of the town lived in small frame tenement houses on the flats by the river around the works of the Cambria Company. The company had filled in the creek beds around the river on which they built housing for their employees. This narrowed the beds of the creeks, wrote Johnson. The made land was not far above the water at ordinary times. Even during the ordinary spring floods the waters rose so high that it flowed into the cellars of the tenements, and at times into the works. Thus, the town and the surrounding area were affected by even small changes in the flow of the Conemaugh River. Although dangerous at times, rivers can be a powerful and efficient way to transport people and cargo, and having a way to control the flow of rivers generally can ensure safe and consistent travel year-round. Thus, the state of Pennsylvania constructed and operated a canal system between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with a dam constructed upstream from Johnstown on the Little Conemaugh as a reservoir for the dry season. William E. Morris was an engineer for the state at the time, and designed the dam. Construction on the dam began in 1840 near South Fork, the nearest town of any size downstream from the dam. It was officially known as the Western Reservoir, but it became known as the South Fork Dam. The dam was completed in 1852, and measured over 72 ft high and 900 ft wide. It was composed of waterproof puddled material covered with shale and stone, called riprap, on the upstream side, a core of shale, earth, and small stones, and a downstream side of mostly large rocks. The reservoir was fed by the South Fork Creek, and under the dam ran a stone culvert which fed the canal system via the Little Conemaugh River. The flow into the culvert was controlled by a series of valves and cast iron pipes. In case the culvert could not handle the amount of water in times of heavy rain, an 85 ft wide spill-way was cut on the east side of the dam, and a flat emergency spill-way that would let water out if the level of water approached the top of the dam was constructed over a rock bed on the hillside on the western side of the dam.

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Figure 1: Original Dam Design

As the dam was completed in 1852, the Pennsylvania Railroad expanded to offer service between Johnstown and Pittsburgh. According to Walter Smoter Frank, who wrote an article on the Johnstown flood in Civil Engineering, With rail service able to deliver goods faster, cheaper and more reliably, the canal was doomed. The state sold the entire canal system and the South Fork Dam to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1857. On June 10, 1862, the culvert collapsed on the upstream side, and a section of the dam above it also collapsed and washed away. The dam was abandoned for the next 13 years, and the gap in the dam enlarged until it measured about 160 ft at the top. In 1875, the dam and 500 acres of surrounding land were sold by the railroad, and the new owner removed and sold the iron pipes and valves for scrap. In 1879, the dam and land were resold to Benjamin Ruff who wanted to repair the dam and create a summer resort out of the former reservoir. With the backing of 15 prominent men from Pittsburgh, Ruff was granted a charter under the name of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. He planned to rebuild the dam to its original height and leave the spill-way to run off excess water, and construction commenced in October of 1879. The repairs consisted of boards and inferior materials bought from local landowners, and on December 25, after five days of rain, were washed away. Work resumed in April of 1880 with slightly better materials and methods. Supervising this repair work was a hired man with some experience in building railroad embankments. Stones and earth made up the downstream part of the dam while straw and brush covered with earth and clay made up the upstream part instead of the more watertight puddled material. Also, hemlock was used to seal up the culvert entrance. According to Walter Frank, The deposited material was little more than a colossal railway embankment without the strength or watertightness of the original. A road was constructed on the top of the dam, and in order to make the width of the road 17 ft to allow for bidirectional traffic, 2 ft was cut off the top of the dam. The main spill-way was originally designed to be 10 ft below the crest of the dam, so this modification reduced the capacity of the spill-way by one fifth. A bridge was constructed over the spill-way with a series of iron fish screens underneath it to prevent stock fish from escaping the lake that would be formed. Also, because earth tends to 3

settle, the reconstructed part of the dam sank to at least 6 in below the rest of the dam. It is not uncommon for the best earth dams to settle, especially at their centers, the weakest point where the water pressure is the greatest, wrote Walter Frank, but with proper maintenance they can be built back up. No such proper maintenance was implemented on the South Fork Dam. The people of Johnstown were concerned about the sturdiness of the dam, and requested that it be inspected by experts. An engineer from the Cambria Iron Company, one from the Pennsylvania Railroad company, and a man chosen by the club inspected the dam. They declared it safe, but recommended some measures to stop leaks. The club carried out these recommendations.

Figure 2: Reconstructed Section Design

As water was allowed to flow in, a lake was formed behind the dam. It covered over 400 acres, and was about 3 mi by 1 mi and 70 ft deep in places. The club changed the name of the lake to Lake Conemaugh. Around the lake, the club built a 47 room clubhouse and 16 privately owned cottages. The club also owned some yachts, sailboats, and canoes. The clubs membership mostly was composed of prominent industrialists from Pittsburgh. For years, the club was a beautiful place to escape from cramped conditions of the large city and relax, but the foundation of the club, the South Fork Dam, was not a comfort to many residents of Johnstown. Even though the dam had been declared safe, the some people in Johnstown still worried about their safety. Johnson wrote that The foundations of the dam at South Fork were considered shaky early in 1888, and many increasing leakages were reported from time to time. However, the people of Johnstown were used to spending time trapped in the second story of their houses while flood waters claimed the first for periods of time, and leakages so often had been reported that a large portion of the townspeople often ignored the warnings because nothing more serious than this inconvenience ever had happened.

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The FloodOn May 30, 1889, a storm came from the east to the Johnstown-South Fork area, and according to Walter Frank, it was the worst down-pour that had ever been recorded in that section of the country. An estimated 6 to 10 in of rain fell in a 24 hour period over the area. The rivers and creeks in the area roared with more water than their banks could hold. Lake Conemaugh began to fill at an alarming rate during the night. By 7 a.m. on the 31st, the water was about 2.5 ft from the top of the dam. The screens in the spill-way had become clogged with debris stirred up by the increased water flow, about 10,000 ft per minute by Franks estimate, and the spill-way only was able to discharge the excess water at about 6000 ft per minute. The caretakers of the dam, organized by a civil engineer named John G. Parke who had been making some improvements to the drainage system, tried to remove the tons of debris caught in the screens. By 9 a.m., the water still was rising at about an inch every 10 minutes, and by 10 a.m., the water was less than a foot from the top to the dam. Workmen also tried to cut a trench on the hillside west of the dam with picks, shovels, and a horse drawn plow. They hoped that the water would cut a wider and deeper path if they started a trench. However, they only were able to cut a path about 2 ft wide and 14 in deep in the 175 ft long hillside before hitting rock. When water started flowing through the trench, the men were sent to the repaired section of the dam to try to heighten it, but made little progress because the dirt on the road was packed solid. By 11 a.m., the water had reached the level of the repaired section of the dam and began to wear away the mound created by the men using the plow. The water flowing through the trench to the west had widened the trench, but had not deepened it as much as had been hoped because the bottom of the trench was rock. The pressure of the water began to cause leaks in the downstream side of the repaired section of the dam. By about 11:30 a.m., a 50 ft section of the mound on the repaired section of the dam gave way, and John Parke set off on horseback to the South Fork telegraph office to warn the people in the valley below of a possible dam collapse. Several other people also tried to warn the people of the valley before and after Parke. [A]mple time was given to the inhabitants of Johnstown by the railroad officials and by other gentlemen of standing and reputation, wrote Johnson, but in hundreds of cases this warning was utterly disregarded. Around 12:30 p.m., Parke returned to find the water flowing over a 300 ft wide section of the dam at about 6 in deep. At this time, the trench to the west had grown to about 25 ft wide, but only gained about 6 in depth. The estimated 123 tons of water flowing over the dam per second tore away at the downstream side of the dam, weakening the dam every second. By 2 p.m., the water had washed away a large section of the downstream side in the center of the dam. At about 3:10 p.m., the entire repaired section of the dam failed completely, and as one witness put it, simply moved away. The gap in the lake eventually widened to about 100 ft, and the lake of about 20 million tons of water emptied in about 45 minutes. A wave 40 ft high roared down the valley, and destroyed several smaller towns between the dam and Johnstown itself, including South Fork, Mineral Point, East Conemaugh, and 5

Woodvale. When the water finally hit Johnstown, it was a wall of debris accumulated from the towns it had hit and water about 40 ft high. The wave picked up houses like toys, crushed the large Cambia Iron works to rubble, and ripped trees out of the ground. Most of the debris tossed about by the flood was caught by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's Stone Bridge a little way down river from Johnstown, and formed a field of debris about 40 ft high and covering 30 acres. The people who had survived being picked up by the flood by floating on debris were either caught in a firestorm when the debris field caught fire or carried further downstream. As a result of the Johnstown Flood of 1889 or simply The Great Flood of 1889, as it became known locally, 2,209 people died, including 99 entire families. Bodies of victims were found as far away as Cincinnati, and almost 800 were never identified. About 1,600 homes were destroyed, $17 million in property damage was done, and four square miles of downtown Johnstown were completely destroyed.

The AftermathAfter the events of May 31, 1889, a huge relief effort was made to help some 25,000 survivors and clean up wreckage left by the water. After men in Pittsburgh had been alerted that Johnstown had been destroyed and that help should be organized, the first relief was sent by train from Pittsburgh on June 1st. According to the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, Relief committees were organized in all the larger American cities. In Paris, Buffalo Bill Cody gave a benefit for the flood fund on June 13. Charity also included food and goods of every kind. Over 1400 train car loads of goods would be sent to Johnstown, and $3,742,818.78 were raised in the U.S. and 12 other countries for the relief effort. This effort also was the first major peacetime disaster relief effort for the American Red Cross, which was led by Clara Barton and organized in 1881. The Red Cross helped treat, feed, and care for the survivors, and built Red Cross hotels that helped house many people. The role the Johnstown flood played in the history of the Red Cross is another reason why the flood remains so significant in American history, according to the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. About 10,000 men worked in the recovery effort, so work progressed quickly. Within 2 weeks, the Pennsylvania Railroad had rebuilt 20 miles of track and bridges that had been washed out by the flood, allowing it to reopen its line to the east. Within 6 weeks, the debris had been removed from the river channels. Critical to the recovery of the town was the announcement on June 9th that the Cambria Iron works would rebuild, ensuring that many jobs would be available to the people of the town in the future. The town was well on its way to becoming the thriving industrial town it once was.

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Investigation and AnalysisInvestigations were launched soon after the disaster, and investigators initially concluded that the dam was simply designed poorly by the original engineer, William E. Morris, who was at that time deceased. The investigators stated that the dam failed because water ran over the top. This situation is the worst possible thing that can befall an earth and rock dam, wrote Frank. The club members were not deemed responsible, and no lawsuit ever was successful against the club for the disaster. Instead, the investigators claimed that Morris did not design the dam to withstand freak storms, which were not an uncommon occurrence in that area, and did not make the spill-way large enough. However, the original design of the dam was different from what the investigators understood, and the dam was not completely finished to the original specifications when it was constructed by the state due to financial issues. Frank argued that [t]he existence of the emergency spillway was never revealed to the investigators. He also points out that the original design called for a main spill-way of a 150 ft width, not 85 ft. Even with the spill-way as it was, the dam probably wouldnt have failed so catastrophically if the dam had had the culvert to aid with drainage and an emergency spill-way that was effective. The lowering of the dam for the roadway made the main and emergency spill-ways, designed to drain off water if the level of the reservoir approached the top of the dam, much less effective. The placement of screens in the main spill-way did not help the situation, either. Therefore, the real culprits of this disaster were the removal of the culvert pipes, the placement of screens in the spill-way, and the ill-repaired center of the dam. The original owner of the dam after the Railroad probably didnt know for what the dam was going to be used in the future, and probably shouldnt be blamed for selling the iron on the property for profit. The way in which the dam was reconstructed and modified probably was a combination of a lack of information, ethical failures, and overreach of knowledge by the club, Benjamin Ruff, and the man supervising the reconstruction. Ruff should have found a professional dam engineer or someone more qualified to repair the dam than the man who only had experience building much smaller railroad embankments. The man who supervised the repairs should not have undertaken something so much larger and different than his area of expertise. However, he was not an educated, trained engineer, and may not have known that he was overstepping the boundaries of his expertise. The road was cut on top of the dam in obvious ignorance of the effect this modification would have on the effectiveness of the spill-ways. Apparently, no one at the time even knew about the emergency spill-way. This point is supported by the fact that Parke did not know that the flat hillside had a rock foundation 2 ft under the surface, for he would not have thought that the water would deepen the trench if he did. Also, investigators left any mention of it out of their reports, and were apparently oblivious to the existence of this second spill-way. If Ruff and the club had sought out information about the original design of the dam, they would have discovered the existence of the second spill-way and the devastating effects of lowering the dam and impeding the spill-way with screens. In short, if they simply had learned more about the 7

design of the dam and reservoir that they had purchased and repairing and maintaining a dam, the disaster may have been avoided.

LessonsThe people of Johnstown learned that they needed to take actions to keep something like this flood from happening again, and in the years after the flood, Johnstown enacted policies intended to minimize flooding in the future. Ordinances were established that prohibited obstructing or dumping in the river and made minimum channel widths for the river. Flood walls also were built along the along the river. To help evacuate people and property in the event of another flood, the Cambria Iron Company constructed the Johnstown inclined plane on a hill near the town. The plane was a hoist built from standard railroad parts from the company, and was constructed with about 900 feet of track at a 71% grade. Two cars ran simultaneously up and down the hill, carrying passengers and cargo between Johnstown and the residential development of Westmont Borough. When the valley again flooded in 1936 and 1977, the plane carried people to safety and help. The fact that no one ever was held legally responsible for the disaster raised questions about the justness of the laws and policies of the time. With the disaster in recent memory, liability laws changed over the next few years so that even non-negligent people could be held liable for damage caused by the unnatural use of land, such as a dam. This shift in the law probably is the biggest effect on the actual practice of engineering as a result of the flood, for no trained and educated engineer modified the dam or drainage system of the South Fork Dam. One can learn from this disaster that, as an engineer, one should undertake only projects for which one has the expertise and knowledge required to ensure minimum threat to human life, property, and the environment. People without training and experience in engineering methods and principles should not be allowed to oversee projects that present the aforementioned dangers, especially dangers on the scale of those involved with the design of the South Fork Dam. However, well trained and experienced engineers still make mistakes and overreach their abilities and knowledge, and some ill-qualified non-engineers always will engage in projects beyond their abilities. These realities are part of living in a non-perfect world, but engineers still must try to make ethical decisions that minimize risk of harm while keeping other factors in mind, as well. Hopefully, this look at the disaster at Johnstown has helped to highlight the importance of this, sometimes very difficult, balancing act between keeping safety and ethics in mind while paying attention to all other factors involved and how catastrophic and far reaching the consequences can be if one fails to balance them correctly.

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WORKS CITEDAssociation, Johnstown Area Heritage. The South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club and the South Fork Dam. 18 March 2010 . CLAUS, C. CONRAD. "OREGONS DEVELOPMENT OF ABSOLUTE." Washington University Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law (1998): 173. Frank, Walter Smoter. "The Cause of the Johnstown Flood: A new look at the Historic Johnstown Flood of 1889." Civil Engineering May 1988: 63-66. Johnstown Area Heritage Association. Facts About the Johnstown Flood. 21 March 2010 . . History of the Johnstown Flood. 21 March 2010 . . The Johnstown flood and the American Red Cross. 22 March 2010 . . The Relief Effort. 22 March 2010 . Johnstown Pennsylvania Information Source Online. Johnstown Inclined Plane 1891 - Historic. 28 March 2010 . Schoenberg, Robert. History of the Johnstown Flood. 27 08 1998. 15 March 2010 . Shugerman, Jed Handelsman. "The Floodgates of Strict Liability:." The Yale Law Journal (2000): 343. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District. Johnstown, Pennsylvania Local Flood Protection Project. 28 January 2010. 28 March 2010 .

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