Charity For Johnstown Ask Dave a weather question

Dave Thurlow, Host

 
Richard Burkert: "The first word, the first notice that anything awful had happened here in Johnstown, railroad crews right down the river from Johnstown and saw bodies and wreckage come tearing by in the swollen Connemaugh River."

It was 1889 and the Johnstown Pennsylvania Flood, in a matter of minutes, had claimed more than 2000 lives. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook. There had been many natural disasters in the country's history, but this one triggered an extraordinary response from around the world.

Richard Burkert: "This was the biggest private charitable act in American history.

Dave: Historian Richard Burkert:

Richard: "Within 12 hours there were massive relief efforts begun in Pittsburgh and then within days, virtually every city in the United States rushing supplies of every description to Johnstown to aid the stricken survivors here. This became an immense charitable effort too. $3.7 million dollars was donated in cash from across the United States and 12 foreign countries."

3.7 million dollars. To give you an idea of enormity of that amount of money, the average worker at the time made a dollar fifty a day. The equivalent today of 3.7 million 1889 dollars would mean donations of about $15 billion dollars. Something about this flood captured the hearts of people all over the country.

Richard: "It affected Victorian Americans in a way that some of these other natural disasters didn't. You had a whole community here in the valley that in just a matter of moments was wiped out. 99 whole families. And it struck America, the horde of sentimental response in Victorian America like no other disaster."

Please visit our website weathernotebook.org for information about another result of the flood, the Johnstown Flood Museum. Our show is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive, with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.

To feed and clothe the victims of the flood, commissaries were set up to distribute goods and materials. Throughout the community buildings that survived the flood were used as ware houses and distribution points for the rail car loads of supplies sent to Johnstown.