To-day it is reported that a young lad, Eddie Fisher, has committed suicide after spending a week in brooding over the loss of his entire family, and that an unknown woman suddenly became insane in the street and had to be removed to a hospital. It is impossible to verify either of these stories, but they are thought to be true, though no information could be had about them at headquarters.
New stories of incidents of the flood are heard every day, and probably will continue to be told for weeks to come, but certainly the most touching of any that have yet been narrated is that of the Frohnheiser family. The father was a well-known workman in the Cambria Iron Works, and lived with his wife, two little girls and a son in a cottage, which was washed away. The mother and elder daughter were lost, but the father managed to crawl from the room with the other two children through a rent made by the flood in the roof. He reached down after his boy and told him to come near to him, but the lad answered: “It is no use, papa, you can’t save me, I’m too far away. Save Katie, she is near to you.” Now the little girl had her leg broken by being jammed in between some furniture, and she cried: “You can’t save me, papa, for my leg is caught. Save him or cut my leg off and get me out.” The boy also asked the father to give him a pistol and he would shoot himself, but just then the house, which had been floating down stream, suddenly struck high ground and fell over on its side. The father landed unhurt, and the two children were thrown out on the hillside. The boy was unhurt and the little girl is now in the hospital doing quite well.
In order to prevent the spread of the pestilence which is feared, fires were late last night started among the wreckage. Thus, in order to save valuable remaining lives, it has been deemed necessary to destroy by the other fearful element the festering debris, even if the bodies underneath have to be cremated with it. It is the only manner in which the health of the locality can be sustained.
[Illustration: THE THREE HUNDREDTH BODY.]
If Johnstown suffered, Cambria City was almost entirely wiped out. The work of repairing the wreck in this place will be short, as the flood did the most of it. Nowhere in all the fifteen-mile course of the fearful torrent was the surface of the earth swept more clean than in that place. Cambria City was a borough organized separately from Johnstown, and lying below it on the opposite side of the river. It began just below the railroad bridge, and extended for a mile down the river. The Conemaugh below the bridge makes a long curve from the mountains, and a flat a mile long, with a curving front half a mile wide at its widest point, is left. Cambria City was built upon this flat. There were 600 houses and about 3,000 inhabitants. Most of the houses were small frame buildings very lightly built. There were a few large stores, a small brick brewery, street car lines, electric lights, and other substantial improvements above ground.