The Johnstown Flood

Book type: History

Summary: Before he wrote 1776  and before he won the Pulitzer Prize for Truman or for John Adams (which HBO famously made into a mini series), David McCullough wrote The Johnstown Flood: The Incredible Story Behind One of the Most Devastating Disasters America Has Ever Known. In fact, he wrote The Johnstown Flood before he wrote anything else. This very first book of his, originally published in 1968, tells the story of what happened to a handful of communities in the mountains of Pennsylvania–communities who lived in the shadow of a large lake held back by an earthen dam, a dam which burst just after Memorial Day in 1889. What is surprising to learn about the Johnstown flood, is that it really wasn’t a huge surprise at all. It had broken several times before the final blow amid constant rain in the spring of 1889, and it even became “something of a local joke,” something that everyone kept waiting for and then never happened; until it did (66). Here are some lessons we can all take away from the tragedy that devastated a Pennsylvania valley and that gripped a nation over a century ago.

Lessons:

1. If you’re going to go about changing the natural order of things, you’d better know what you’re doing. The South Fork dam was a manmade construction, and ultimately it failed because the men who owned the property it was on failed to heed warnings and make necessary repairs that could have saved thousands of lives. The water that broke loose from the dam “charged into the valley at a velocity and depth comparable to that of the Niagara River as it reaches Niagara Falls. Or to put it another way, the bursting of the South Fork dam was about like turning Niagara Falls into the valley for thirty-six minutes” (102) and by the time it was over–an extremely brief amount of time at that–over two thousand people would be dead, and the bodies of many would never be recovered. After the flood, many writers “took up the old line that if God had meant for there to be such a thing as dams, He would have built them himself. The point, of course, was not that dams, or any of man’s efforts to alter or improve the world about him, were mistakes in themselves. The point was that if man, for any reason, drastically alters the natural order, setting in motion whole series of chain reactions, then he had better know what he is doing” (262). Frankly, much of the time, man has no conception of what the possible outcomes may be. Countless times throughout history humans have made alterations to an ecosystem just to find that their brilliant idea wasn’t so smart after all. Whether it’s introducing new species to an area or decimating a species to help with something else, too often we make things worse by trying to make things in nature better. Be careful how you play with the Earth, my friends.
2. Don’t assume that you’re safe in the hands of others. The South Fork dam was owned by a group of businessmen from Pittsburgh who liked to visit their manmade lake for fishing and “roughing it” in comfy cottages. These businessmen were almost all millionaires of the steel industry, and the people who lived in the valley all year round made the mistake of thinking that the rich people who owned the dam wouldn’t let it fall into disrepair. After all, why would they want to run the risk of the dam breaking on them too? Unfortunately, these men weren’t engineers and they never consulted experts to weigh in on the safety level of the dam. Because the people in the valley assumed the rich guys knew what they were doing, they didn’t press them about potential safety hazards or necessary repairs, and when the dam finally broke for good, many of them didn’t even know what hit them. Literally. The floodwaters tore down trees, telegraph poles, houses, barns, and anything else along the path down the mountain, such that when the flood was nearly upon residents in the various cities, they couldn’t even see the water. All they saw was the debris. Many people heard the devastation coming but didn’t see it was a flood. (Of course several knew the rains were probably the cause, or may have known that the dam had broken, but all they saw was the wreckage straight at them.)
   

   This stone bridge caught much of the debris (human as well as timber) when the flood made its way down the mountain. The same night as the flood, the wreckage caught fire and several people were trapped inside. Eventually, it would take a large amount of dynamite to break it all loose.

    

3. Don’t jump to conclusions. So often we’re tempted to provide our own theories of how a tragedy has come to pass without having all the facts, and the days after the Johnstown flood definitely illustrated this principle. Some argued that it was the start of the Final Judgment and everyone else should prepare for what was to come, while others blamed the rich guys for not maintaining the dam properly, and still others said that clearly it was God showing his displeasure with the sins of Johnstown, a judgment in line with the Old Testament story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
   

   It was a line of reasoning which many people were quick to accept, for at least it made some sense of the disaster. But it was a line of reasoning which met with much amusement in Johnstown, where, as anyone knew who knew his way about could readily see, Lizzie Thompson’s house [a brothel] and several rival establishments on Green Hill had not only survived the disaster, but were going stronger than ever before. “If punishment was God’s purpose,” said one survivor, “He sure had bad aim” (252-253).

4.  Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good. Several people survived the disaster out of pure luck (or providence, depending on your point of view), when seemingly everyone else around them died. As a train car full of people fled for the hills when the water was almost upon them, the baggage master J.W. Grove, hopped on top of a train engine nearby instead of following everyone else to the hill. “Every other loose engine in East Conemaugh was dumped over, driven into the hillside, or swept off with the flood, except the one he picked” (124). Additionally, all of Johnstown’s three or four blind people survived the flood, while around them, “Ninety-nine whole families had been wiped out. Three hundred ninety-six children aged ten years or less had been killed. Ninety-eight children lost both parents. One hundred and twenty-four women were left widows; 198 men lost their wives” (195). There was no sense in who died and who was spared, most of it was pure dumb luck, like the family of six who survived having their house thrown on its side and impaled by an oak tree. Sometimes you can’t know what you should do in a given situation and have to hope and pray you just make it out. As one of the steel mill owners said in a speech to the community during their first church service after the flood, “‘Think how much worse it could’ve been. Give thanks for the great stone bridge that saved hundreds of lives. Give thanks that it did not come in the night. Trust in God'” (236).

 

The most amazing fact is that the house is still mostly in one piece, unlike almost every other house in the town.

 

A final review/recommendation:

McCullough’s book is a captivating look into a historical tragedy that dominated all the important newspapers of the time for several days (it was the front page story for the New York Times for five straight days) and yet one that most Americans have probably never heard of. It’s a story of death, but also of rebuilding and community, of people losing their families, but also helping to save others, and it offers several insights that are just as true for us now as they were for the residents of the cities in the shadow of the South Fork dam in 1889. For those who are history fans and for those who are not, it’s a heart-wrenching story and it’s worth checking out.

 

Photo credits:

Book cover: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hY-4lomJSGs/STd5INqgYuI/AAAAAAAAAwo/dxFdjDgggWU/s1600-h/Johnstown%2BFlood.jpg
Stone Bridge: http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/5johnstown/5images/5img3bl.jpg
Treehouse: http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/rg/di/lindariesphotoguide/johnstown%20tree%20in%20house.jpg

Death in the City of Light (A Macabre Way to End/Start the Year)

Book type: History/True Crime

Summary: David King’s Death in the City of Light recounts the sordid discoveries made at 21 rue Le Sueur in Paris, France in March 1944, in the middle of the Nazi Occupation. Local authorities stumbled upon countless body parts in the building owned by Dr. Marcel Petiot, and from there began one of the most arduous and incomplete investigations the police had hitherto undertaken. The bodies, severely decomposed by fire and lime (having been shoved into a stove and/or lime pit), were essentially unidentifiable, which forced the police to piece together an argument that was anything but bulletproof. What the police did know, was that various people had approached Dr. Petiot in the hopes of fleeing Paris and were never seen again. Some families received letters from their loved ones who had reportedly made it safely out of France, but these letters were often dubious, including pet names the individuals never used for one another. At the end of the war, two trials would make headlines with similar charges: the Nuremberg Trials, which accused high-ranking Nazi officials of participating in the slaughter of several million Jews and other “undesirables,” and the trial of Dr. Marcel Petiot for the murder of at least twenty-seven Jews, gangsters, prostitutes, and patients, whom he allegedly lured with the promise of freedom abroad and then robbed and executed in his grand Parisian home.

Lessons:

1. Always give clear directions. After the grisly discoveries were made by Parisian police at Petiot’s residence, the German authorities also got wind of what was going on. “At some point that morning–the time is disputed–a black Citroën pulled up to 21 rue Le Sueur with four German officers, obviously of high rank. They entered the building and then quickly returned to the car. By the early afternoon, the time also unclear, a telegram from the High Command of the German Military Occupation reached [Commissaire] Massu’s offices on the Quai des Orfèvres. It read in full: ‘Order from German Authorities. Arrest Petiot. Dangerous Madman’” (emphasis mine, 32). Unfortunately, despite the clarity of the Germans’ directions to the local police, Petiot wasn’t going to be arrested anytime soon. He had rode up on his bicycle shortly after the discovery, and, after telling the police he was Petiot’s brother and that the doctor was a member of the Resistance, they let him go. Oh, and they told him what they’d found so far and even let him go inside unaccompanied for a few minutes before he rode away. A for effort, gentlemen. Nice job.
2.  Justice means different things in different places. This is a glaringly obvious statement in some ways. Clearly “justice” in Norway (where that crazy shooter goes to a prison that even Martha Stewart would enjoy) is different from that in Texas, where 508 people have been executed since 1976 alone (according to the Death Penalty Information Center). But this justice isn’t what I’m referring to. I don’t mean the end result of the trial, I mean the trial itself. In the U.S. defendants have the right to a jury trial, a lawyer, etc. In the Petiot trial in France, the defendant had the right to interrupt the prosecuting attorneys and any witnesses whenever he wanted to. And if he wasn’t allowed to do this, a mistrial could be declared. And all of this pales in comparison to the Italian justice system, which is so thoroughly batshit crazy that I can’t even get into that here. (Read one of my favorite books of all time, The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, if you want to learn more.) All the differences in due procedure between states and countries can really make you wonder if the system where you live is actually the best one out there. At least yours is probably better than Italy’s. Just ask Amanda Knox.
3. Everything exists in comparison to something else. Related to my previous point about legal systems above, we would do well to remember that everything is relative. Even creepy Dr. Marcel Petiot knew that. At one point in his trial he stated that he had been working on an invention and that “…’everyone with a fancy for invention is suspected of being crazy,'” to which the judge responded: “‘But it was you who pretended to be insane every time you had trouble with the law,'” further prompting Petiot to note that “No one ever knows if he is crazy or not…You can only be crazy by comparison'” (243). Wise words from a classifiable creeper. In addition to the fact that no one is crazy when completely alone (the same idea as the question of whether the tree falling in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it), even horror is a matter of comparison, which was a sorry reality for the victims’ families during Petiot’s trial.
   

   The trial was ironically, as several journalists noted, making it harder to sympathize with the plight of the victims. Indeed the last five years of world war had desensitized many people who had lived through the Holocaust, the ferocious firebombing raids, and an array of horrors that left between fifty and sixty million people dead. One of the trial’s low points was when [Prosecutor] Dupin protested that ‘human life is sacred’ and the audience laughed (253).

4. You never know when something may come full circle. At the beginning of this year, I did an entry for on this blog on A First-Rate Madness, a book that postulated there may be specific reasons why people with mental illnesses or conditions end up in great positions of leadership. The author, Nassir Ghaemi, explained some personality types that are more extreme versions of what all people feel and experience. One of those is the “cyclothymic” personality, which describes people who go back and forth through highs and lows of mood and energy. Therefore, when I read the following sentence in Death in the City of Light, I was surprised and excited to see my reading from 2013 come full circle: “As Petiot’s dossier, number 363 831, revealed, Dr. Delmas diagnosed the new patient as ‘cyclothymic,’ that is, suffering from a mild manic-depressive psychosis” (212). Additionally–and I note this just for fun–at one point during Petiot’s trial, apparently “The dark circles under [Petiot’s] eyes reminded the writer Jean Galtier-Boissière of the makeup applied to sleepwalker Cesare in the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (239). I reference this example because I had to watch this German silent film only about 1,759,364 times when I was in college since I was a German major and, aside from the fact that it made me realize everything Tim Burton creates appears to be based on that film, I never thought it would come up again after I graduated. I stand corrected.
   

   In the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Cesare (above right) is billed at a carnival as a somnambulist, or sleepwalker. Apparently he and Petiot have more in common than just their dark circles.

    

5. “The greatness of man lies in the decision to be stronger than his condition” -Albert Camus writing for the Resistance paper Combat. ‘Nuff said.

A final review/recommendation:

This book shared some distinct similarities with other books I’ve read, especially The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (which I can’t recommend highly enough) and The Murder of the Century by Paul Collins, which I wrote an entry on in March of 2013. I actually found the historical discussions of life in Occupied Paris (unrelated to Dr. Petiot) to be the most interesting, which may be due to the fact that the author David King was a European history professor. I wish that the intrigue of Petiot and his crimes had been as interesting to me as the history segments, but the trial portion of the book was more entertaining, if only for the fact that it read like a Hollywood movie script, with Petiot insulting the lawyers and vice versa. If you like true crime or things French, I would recommend this book. If you haven’t read The Devil in the White City though, I would recommend that one more to you. (They both deal with serial killer doctors in a major metropolis.)

Photo credits:
Book cover: https://ccriderwrites.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/78441-deathinthecityoflight.jpg
Dr. Death: http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Marcel_Petiot.jpg
Cesare the Somnambulist: http://charliechap.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-9-25-42-am.png
The Sleepy Serial Killer: http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5878/docteurpetiot00009.jpg