Many articles of wearing apparel were found here, but no bodies could be discovered in the whole stretch of the plain, from which it is inferred that most of the deaths occurred at the gorge or else the flood swept them far away.
One of the few buildings that are left in this part of town is the fine house of Mr. Geranheiser, of the Cambria Iron Company. It presents a queer spectacle--that is common here but has not often been seen before. The flood reached almost to the second floor and was strong enough to cut away about half the house, leaving the rest standing. The whole interior of the place can be seen just as the frightened inmates left it. The carpets are torn up from the first floor, but the pictures are still hanging on the walls and an open piano stands against the wall full of mud; a Brussels carpet being halfway out of the second story on the side where the wreck was and showing exactly how high the water came. There was a centre table in the room and an open book on it. Chairs stood about the room and the pictures were on the walls, and half of the room was gone miles away.
Just below the bare plain where the business block of Johnstown stood, and above the stone arch bridge on which the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed the river, are seven acres of the wreckage of the flood. The horrors that have been enacted in that spot, the horrors that are seen there every hour, who can attempt to describe? Under and amid that mass of conglomerate rubbish are the remains of at least one thousand persons who died the most frightful of deaths.
This is the place where the fire broke out within twenty minutes after the flood. It has burned ever since. The stone arch bridge acted as a dam to the flood, and five towns were crushing each other against it. A thousand houses came down on the great wave of water, and were held there a solid mass in the jaws of a Cyclopean vise.
A kitchen stove upset. The mass took fire. A thousand people were imprisoned in these houses. A thousand more were on the roofs. For most of them there was no escape. The fire swept on from house to house. The prisoners saw it coming and shrieked and screamed with terror, and ran up and down their narrow quarters in an agony of fear.