Word: johnstown
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...Johnstown...
...city in the U.S., the words 'The dam has broken' have for generations meant hell and anguish." So cried a citizen of Johnstown, Pa. after the disastrous 1936 flood. Last week Johnstown celebrated the finishing of a flood-control project which the city hopes has freed it from deluge forever...
Since 1808 Johnstown has had 23 floods. The one which still stands as the worst catastrophe in U.S. history was that of 1889, which killed 2,300 of Johnstown's 30,000 people and all but washed the town from the map. Johnstown lies in a narrow valley at the junction of Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh. At 3 p.m. on May 31, 1889, flood waters broke through the South Fork Dam, towering twelve miles away and 300 ft. above Johnstown. A 40-ft. wall of water crashed against the town with Niagara force, carrying with...
...Johnstown rebuilt its steel plants and homes, but failed to undertake flood control. The town was very vulnerable to floods because of 1) heavy rainfall (47.5 in. a year, 12 in. more than in Pittsburgh, 58 miles away), and 2) narrow, shallow river channels that did not carry off the water fast enough. When, on March 17, 1936, a great flood struck again, destroying $40,000,000 of Johnstown property, the town's 67,000 citizens as one man asked the U.S. for help...
...first planned to build a series of impounding reservoirs in the hills around Johnstown. But when Army engineers tested this scheme on a scale model, it did not work. Eventually they chose to drain the valley. They widened and deepened the channels of Stony Creek, the Conemaugh and the Little Conemaugh, straightened curves, built concrete banks up to 67 ft. high. They spent $8,670,000 all told. Result: swift-flowing, unobstructed channels that are calculated to carry off any floods that may funnel into the valley...