The Weather Notebook: Messing With Nature

Messing With Nature
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.

In Johnstown, PA in 1889, the world's largest earthen dam at the time burst and poured millions of gallons of water into the valley below. Two thousand people died.

"People really need to keep in mind, which is you can't mess with nature fundamentally without knowing what the consequences are going to be."

That's Historian and Director of the Johnstown Flood Museum Richard Burkert:

"Here in Johnstown there was some serious environmental practices. There were floods almost every year, they'd cut the widths of the rivers in half. They'd logged off the hillsides so water was ending up in rivers really quickly. And then they dammed them everywhere possible with the industrial development of Johnstown and so Johnstown was an environmental disaster waiting to happen. They really, the headlong development of this area gave scant recognition of what the consequences were going to be and it took a tragic revenge on the population here, way worse than could have ever been predicted in the horror of the Johnstown flood."

Wondering why people resettled in Johnstown after the disaster Here's how Burket responded.

"Well why do people live anywhere. I mean, because they like it here. Sure Johnstown's prone to floods now as its turned out what people have done is tended to move up on the hillsides,hilltops and that the valley is increasingly used for industry and commercial purposes. This is home. It's a really great quality of life here. The floods have shaped the community to some extent and people have a fierce loyalty to this community. They live here because they like it."

That's Richard Burkett, Historian and Director of the Johnstown Flood Museum in Pennsylvania. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported by the National Science Foundation.