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Shownotes Transcript
John Park shouts to be heard over the pouring rain. His voice is ragged with fatigue. Everyone back! Back away! It's 3:05 p.m. on May 31st, 1889 in western Pennsylvania. For the last hour, Park's workers have been straining to remove an iron grate that's clogged with debris. It's blocking the mouth of the spillway that runs along one side of the South Fork Dam.
Torrential rains have lifted the lake behind the dam to a dangerous level. Already, water is pouring over the top of the dam, and if they can't dislodge the grate and get the spillway flowing again, it's only going to get worse. But the grate simply isn't moving. Even using a team of horses hasn't done any good. Park has lost any hope of dislodging the grate, or the huge trees and branches that are blocking it.
So, Park is ordering everyone to back off. The dam is too unstable to be anywhere near it. "Move back! I'll get the horses!" Park grabs the reins of two horses, leads them over to a tree, and ties them up. Then he joins the men. There's nothing to do now but watch.
Park looks on helplessly as a cascade of water flows over the top of the dam, pouring into the river valley below. He can see at least five big geysers shooting out of the face of the dam, and who knows how many other smaller trickles. He knows that the old dam, built mainly of compacted dirt, has been poorly reinforced over the years, and is now in real danger of failing. Park hears his boss Colonel Unger call to the men.
Gather round, everyone. Let's pray for the safety and deliverance of the dam. Everyone around Park makes the sign of the cross and bows their head in prayer. Most of the workers are Italian and pray in their native language. Park doesn't speak Italian and isn't Catholic. He's not religious at all. But if there's ever been a time in his life for prayer, it's now. So he lowers his head.
Between prayers, Park keeps checking the sky. The rain has been letting up. Maybe, just maybe, if it doesn't start up again, the bulk of the dam can hold on and the valley will be spared. But minutes later, at 3:10 PM, Park feels a rumbling in the ground, followed by a low roar as if from a massive earthquake. Instinctively, he grabs the man next to him.
Then, abruptly, the whole dam gives way, like a giant came down from the clouds and gave it a swift kick. All the earth piled up there, 72 feet high, 900 feet wide, tumbles all at once, like an avalanche.
Park went to Niagara Falls once as a child. He always remembered the thunderous power of one of the biggest waterfalls on Earth. But Niagara seems like nothing compared to the failure of the South Fork Dam. He can actually feel the roar, a rumbling in his legs, trembling right up to his chest. Park utters one last quiet prayer. God, save Johnstown.
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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds. In May 1889, after a month of pounding rain, a neglected earthen dam in western Pennsylvania collapsed, unleashing 20 million tons of water in an instant.
The 30,000 people who lived in the narrow river valley below had heard warnings about the aging dam for years, but they'd brushed them off as false alarms. Few were prepared when the dam finally did break.
The resulting flood pushed a huge mass of trees, dirt, and other debris toward the small city of Johnstown, 14 miles away. There, heavy rains had already caused minor flooding, but none of the residents had any idea of the disaster that was bearing down on them. This is Episode 3, Cascade.
Telegraph operator Emma Ehrenfeld sighs. It's another message from a railroad company in Pittsburgh, asking when the local tracks will be open. What do they expect from her? Even before the message finishes, she starts composing a reply.
A train whistle pierces the air. The telegraph office here in South Fork is close to the depot, so it's a familiar sound. In fact, railroad engineers often goof around and play songs on their whistles, like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Yankee Doodle." But this is a single, loud, continuous shrill, which can only mean one thing: danger. She rises and hurries to the window of her second-story office.
But at the window, she feels a rumbling beneath her feet. Her telegraph keys begin trembling, spewing out nonsense. Is this an earthquake? Ehrenfeld sees railroad workers below running in panic and pointing over their shoulders. It's hard to hear what they're saying. She looks in the direction they're pointing, where the river runs near the railroad tracks. What she sees leaves her dumbfounded.
There's a mountain of debris coursing right down the river valley. It looks like a vast moving wall of mud, rocks, trees, fragments of bridges, smashed up houses, all coming right for her.
Ehrenfeld has no idea what's happening, but she doesn't wait to figure it out. She runs for the door, throws it open, and tears down the stairs two at a time. Outside, she feels the rain pelt her head and realizes she forgot her hat, but there's no time to double back for it.
She takes off sprinting. She needs to reach higher ground to survive. Her telegraph office is near a steep ridge, and she hurries up the slope. There's a path up, but it's muddy, and she's wearing a dress, making it hard to scramble. She slips and grabs onto the roots of a bush nearby.
She looks up. She's climbed about 40 feet, and there's another 100 to the top of the ridge. She's gasping, and the rumbling has grown louder. She glances left, towards the east, and sees the wall of mud just a quarter mile away now.
It's devouring everything in its path: timber, fences, barbed wire, chimneys, hay bales, even animals. And behind it, she can see what's pushing the wall down the slope: an entire lake's worth of water. Her mind flashes back to the messages of warning she relayed earlier, about the dam two miles upstream. "Dear Lord," she thinks, "it failed. This time, it really failed."
Ehrenfeld starts scrambling again up the ridge. She hears a few railroad workers to her left and right, also climbing up the slope. Some cry for help. Ehrenfeld feels panic pulsing through her body. She's going to die. She's sure of it.
But some animal instinct rises up inside of her. She grabs trees and roots, stumbling uphill. Her lungs are burning, and it feels like she's dragging thick anchors behind her. But she can't stop. Her life depends on it. At last, she reaches the top of the ridge. There are a few other people up there, just as dirty and breathless as she is.
A moment later, the wall of debris reaches her telegraph tower, her office, the place where she proudly built her career. She hopes it can somehow survive. But it doesn't. Not even for a second. It explodes like a flimsy wooden crate, sending a spray of wooden shrapnel into the air. Moments later, it's indistinguishable from all the other wreckage.
After the wall passes, a lake of water sweeps through the valley. It's muddy and dirty, the color of heavily creamed coffee. Several railroad cars bob along in it, as well as some dead cows. She's left stunned at the sheer power of the flood, and she can see only a few other people up here with her. What about the other workers she saw fleeing? Did they make it out alive?
Ehrenfeld surveys the devastation below. It's like something out of a nightmare. She can't imagine how anyone who didn't reach higher ground could have survived. John McKee shivers on the cold concrete bench of his cell in the drunk tank in Johnstown.
He's pulled his jacket over his eyes, trying to sleep off his hangover, but it's no use. Nothing can stop the pounding in his head or quell the waves of nausea. The only bright spot is when he hears the church bells ring for 4 p.m., the time the jailer said he could go home. If nothing else, he's learned a valuable lesson today. Don't be a drunken idiot. It's time to grow up.
He never thought he'd say it, but even working in a steel mill is paradise compared to prison. A few minutes later, McKee hears the jingle of keys, then the door opening at the end of the corridor. It's the heavyset jailer, come to release him at last. McKee just hopes his father isn't home when he arrives. It was humiliating enough when his father came by the jail earlier to scold him. He can't bear to face him again in this state.
Painfully, McKee sits up, then rises to his feet. The jailer waves, but when he's halfway down the hall, something odd happens. McKee feels the floor beneath him start rumbling. The jailer feels it too. He looks confused. "Hold tight, son. Let me see what's going on." "Hey, no! Let me out first! Come on!" But the jailer disappears down the end of the hallway.
McKee keeps shouting, "Come on, come back, come back!" But there's no response. He shakes the bars of his cell. The rumble is only growing louder. Something is coming. Reverend H.L. Chapman drops his pen and rubs his tired eyes. It's just past 4:00 PM and he's finally finished his sermon.
He pulls off his slippers and massages his feet, enjoying a rare moment of peace in the office of his new house on the edge of Johnstown. Then he remembers the flooding. He puts his slippers back on, rises from his desk, and walks down the hall toward the front door. If the water levels outside have receded, he needs to head across town to pay a condolence visit to the widow whose husband drowned. The day's work is not over yet.
He passes by the parlor and sees his wife Agnes with their seven-year-old granddaughter Nellie sitting on her lap. The little girl's been sick, but now she's rosy-cheeked and happy. Agnes is reading her a story from a children's illustrated Bible. The sight puts a smile on Chapman's face. But when Chapman opens the front door and steps onto his front porch, his smile fades.
The water outside is much higher than he expected, swallowing his lawn and halfway up the elevated foundation of his home. And, bizarrely, the water is pushing an empty railroad car past his house. Chapman can only stare in wonder, his mouth hanging open. Where did it come from? What is happening?
Before he can make any sense of it, he hears an ominous rumbling in the distance. He turns toward the east, where the river flows into town and freezes. There's a gigantic mountain of mud and trees hurtling down the river valley, right toward his home. For a moment, he just stands there, gaping. Then he darts back inside and runs into the parlor. "Everyone, upstairs! Run!"
His wife and his granddaughter stare at him. His wife's cousin, Mrs. Brinker, is there too, and he sees his cook and maid down the hallway near the kitchen, but no one moves. "What? Get upstairs! To the attic! Go, go, go!"
Chapman grabs Agnes and Nellie by the hands and yanks them toward the stairs. That finally gets everyone moving. The maid and cook take the back stairs, while Mrs. Brinker follows Agnes. But Chapman doesn't join them. Halfway up the first flight, he pivots and hurries back down. He needs to do two things. First, grab the Chapman family bible, which has his family tree written inside. It's been passed down for four generations and is too precious to lose.
Second, turn off the gas in the fireplace in the parlor. If it's left on, a leak could occur and could either poison them or build up to explosive levels. He goes for the gas first, turning left at the bottom of the stairs. The valve squeaks as he shuts it tight. He turns for the family bible, but before he can reach it,
The front door explodes inward. It's blown right off its hinges, as if it was rigged with dynamite. And with the door gone, a torrent of dirty brown water rushes in. Before Chapman can even scream, the parlor is flooded up to his knees. The force nearly sweeps him off his feet.
He starts splashing toward the front stairs and realizes he'll never make it. The stairs are too close to the front door, where there's now a furious rush of water pouring in. If he tries to pass through that, he'll be knocked flat and probably drown.
His only hope is the other set of stairs in the back. He turns and starts thrashing towards them, but he can't get much traction with slippers on. The water's already past his waist and quite strong, like wading through a current. Chapman struggles forward, fighting the rushing water with every step. As he does, the reality of what's happening sinks in. Mrs. Brinker's dire predictions about the dam were right. It must have collapsed.
Soon, all of Johnstown will be under God knows how many feet of water. And if he doesn't make it to the back stairs in the next few seconds, he's going to drown. When you're hiring, time is of the essence. That's why more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide use Indeed to find exceptional talent fast. Indeed's powerful matching engine works quickly. So quickly that according to Indeed data worldwide, every minute, 23 hires are made on Indeed.
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Reverend H.L. Chapman fights his way through the water surging around him. It's already past mid-chest and keeps shoving him sideways, away from the back staircase he's trying to reach. In the parlor, the water has started to lift and push furniture around. The glass-fronted china cabinet tips over and teacups and gravy boats smash against the panes. Chapman fights his way past several floating chairs.
Then, something hidden under the water trips him, and he stumbles and plunges into the water. He comes up sputtering, his eyes stinging, and grabs a nearby table to regain his balance. By the time he reaches the back stairs, his mouth is barely above the water. He grips the banister and pulls himself forward, half pushing off the stairs and half swimming upward. But the water is rising so fast that it swallows him up.
*coughing*
Suddenly, he's spun around, with the current pushing him in the wrong direction, away from where he needs to go. He ends up pinned against the ceiling. He gasps and takes a deep breath. Now the water is all the way up to the ceiling, and he's fully submerged. Chapman begins swimming harder than he ever has in his life, kicking his legs furiously.
He's not sure how much longer he can hold his breath. His lungs burn while his hands grope the ceiling above him, trying to find the overhang that marks the base of the stairs up to the second floor. Finally, he reaches up and feels air. He keeps kicking, and a moment later gets past the ceiling overhang. His head darts up, and he takes in a huge gulp of air.
Then he swims forward, still kicking, until he reaches the top of the stairs. He ends up in the second floor hallway, panting on his hands and knees. But the water is still rising. It's almost at the second floor landing. He struggles to his feet and staggers for the stairs that lead to the attic. He prays his family all made it there. There's no way his little granddaughter would survive what he just went through. He's got to make sure that they're all safe.
Horace Rose bites his lip and concentrates as he stretches his wife's broom out his second floor window toward the house next door.
There's a cup of coffee balanced on the end of the broom. He's trying to get it to the widow who lives there, without it spilling. His children shout encouragement behind him. Rose's whole family has been together in the top floors of their home for several hours now, waiting for the floodwaters to recede. To pass the time, Rose came up with a game: pass objects on a broom to their next-door neighbor and her young daughter.
Everyone cheers when the widow grabs the trembling cup. Rose pulls the broom back and takes a dramatic bow while everyone laughs. Thank you, thank you. Never let it be said that the roses didn't take lemons and make lemonade. But then Rose hears and feels something like thunder. But it's not coming from the sky. It's coming from the earth. He leans out the window into the rain and freezes in terror.
A mountain of mud, trees, broken homes, and flipped train cars is surging down the river valley, some sort of landslide. He sees it smash into a few outbuildings that belong to the local steel mill, pulverizing them. Rose watches for a moment, horrified, then turns to his family. Up to the third floor. Run!
Everyone dashes for the hallway, then turns left for the stairs. His boys race up while his daughter and wife Margaret are slower, having to fight their dresses. Rose follows, making sure everyone gets up safe. On the third floor, Rose goes to the window. From up here, he can see what's pushing the mud and debris forward. A massive torrent of water, like the biggest river he's ever seen.
He realizes in a flash that the South Fork Dam must have collapsed. There's no other explanation. The flood has already overwhelmed most of the steel mill. Rose watches in shock as a few smokestacks, taller than oak trees, topple like bowling pins. Rose feels Margaret grab his shoulder. "Horace? What did we do?"
Rose says nothing, because there's nothing they can do. The surge reaches some homes just a few blocks away and starts crushing them like eggshells. "Everyone get down!" But Rose remains standing, transfixed. Seconds later, the widow's home next door explodes into pieces. A shower of shingles leaps into the air. Rose grips the windowsill, his knuckles white.
Now the surge is coming for Rose's house. In the last instant, Rose sees oddly specific things mixed with the debris. A telegraph machine, a mattress, tangles of barbed wire. The debris slams right into the window. Rose stumbles backwards as the roof beams crack above him. The whole ceiling comes tumbling down. Rose feels something smash into his head and his world goes black.
16-year-old Victor Heiser strips off his shoes and socks and splashes across the knee-deep water in his family's backyard. He's heading toward the barn, 50 yards away up the ridge. When he's above the waterline, he trudges up the muddy, slippery slope. By the time he reaches the barn, he's huffing and puffing. It's past 4 p.m. now, and Victor is exhausted.
He spent hours moving most of the inventory in his family's store up to the second floor to keep it dry. And customers kept stopping by, wanting to stock up on goods like salted pork and cornmeal in case the flooding got worse. So Victor had to keep hauling items back down. And no doubt his mother and father will ask him to haul the rest down when the floodwaters recede. Although, who knows when that'll be.
He slides open the barn door and steps inside. The smell of wet hay fills his nostrils. He walks back to the horse stall and unhitches the two horses from their ropes. His mother is worried that the rising waters might reach the barn, so she wants the horses loose, in case they need to swim to safety. Victor's father said she was overreacting, but as usual, she won the argument.
Victor is about to leave the barn when he hears a strange noise. As he steps outside, the ground begins shaking beneath him. Heart pounding, he looks toward the source of the sound and sees a giant mass of trees, mud, splintered wood, and broken masonry tumbling down the river valley. It looks to be at least 40 feet tall and maybe half a mile wide, filling the whole valley floor.
Victor hears a shout. Run for the roof! Victor sees his father back at their home, leaning out the second-story window. He jabs a finger at the barn. Victor turns and runs back inside.
The ladder for the hayloft is already shaking so much he can barely hold on. He scrambles up, then reaches for a hatch that leads onto the roof. The roof is several big sheets of corrugated tin, painted bright red. It's chilly up here, and slippery in the rain. It takes Victor a few seconds to stand up and get his bearings. And a few seconds is all he gets.
before the wave of debris slams into the building that houses both his family home and dry goods store. Almost instantly, it's smashed to pieces. Plaster flies up like the spray from crashing surf, and every window blows out at once. A cry is torn loose from Victor's throat. "Mom! Dad!" He scans the jumbled wreckage for a face, a body, even an arm or leg.
But there's nothing. No sign of his parents at all. Behind the wave of debris, Victor sees a vast expanse of churning water. The barn is partway up the ridge and doesn't sustain a direct hit from the debris, but the water behind it swamps the entire structure. Victor watches helplessly as the horses are swept away in the torrent.
Then the weight of the water begins to wrench the barn from its foundation. A moment later, all four walls fold in and the roof pancakes downward. Victor feels himself falling. Then the roof smacks the water and Victor lands hard, getting the wind knocked out of him.
Thankfully, he doesn't slip off the red tin roof. But that's the only good news. The roof is being pulled into the current. And now, he's at the mercy of the flood. John McKee shakes the bars of his jail cell, then cops his hands around his mouth and shouts down the hallway, "Hey! No! Come back! Come back! Please! Hello?" But there's no answer.
It really seems like the jailer has fled and left him here alone, trapped in his cell. And the rumbling that started a few minutes ago has only grown louder. "Hello? Is anyone there?" As if in answer, the big metal door at the end of the hallway blasts open and a torrent of water surges in. McKee's fear turns to panic. He can't swim.
This water is angry and alive. It's thick and brown and gushes down the hallway, slapping against the brick walls and pouring between the bars of his cell. In seconds, the water is up to his ankles, soaking his shoes. He hops up onto the concrete bench. Help! Help me! He quickly unbuckles his belt and starts clanging it against the bars to make as much noise as possible. Can anyone hear me?
But no one answers. If only this cell had a window, someone outside might hear him. But it doesn't. He looks down at the water again. It's rising. Fast. There's no way he can escape.
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Horus Rose feels his eyelids flutter as he awakens. It takes all the effort he can muster just to look left or right. And even when he does, he can't see anything except vague shadows. He has no idea where he is or how he got there. What he does know is that he's in a lot of pain.
Hey, Dad. Dad, can you hear me?
It's his son Percy, and he's digging Rose out from under something. A board lifts, and a light floods Rose's face. Dad, are you okay? Rose tries to answer, but can only moan. Percy keeps digging away and frees him from underneath the rubble in a few minutes, helping him sit up.
Rose looks around and sees that he's in the third floor of his home, or at least what's left of it. The walls are broken and buckled, and there's a hole in the ceiling where the rafters have collapsed. He turns to Percy. What happened? One of those beams clobbered you in the head and knocked you unconscious. You've got a pretty nasty gash on your face, too. Where's everyone else?
"They're all up on the roof. We need to get up there too. We'll be safer there. Can you make it?" Rose nods, and even that hurts. His collarbone must be broken. Rose feels Percy grip his arm. "Dad, we need to move. If the whole roof collapses, we'll be trapped." Rose takes Percy's arm and struggles to his feet. The floor is swaying, as if he's on a small boat in a storm.
He can hear crashing against the timbers as debris continues to slam into his house. Arm in arm, they make their way slowly up a heap of boards and shattered masonry. They emerge through a hole in the ceiling and onto the roof. From the roof, Rose sees the remains of other homes piled against his own. Rose's house is acting as a kind of levee, and debris is collecting against the part of the house that's above the water.
There's even a few people climbing over the wreckage. Percy helps Rose down onto a piece of slate roofing. A flat spot. He's just getting Rose settled when a little girl's scream pierces the chaos. Rose knows that voice. Despite the pain, he wrenches his head around. It's June, Rose's daughter. She must have slipped off the roof because he can see her thrashing in the muck.
His wife, Margaret, appears from nowhere and jumps into the water. She grabs June, but then they both disappear beneath the surface. Rose is in such pain he can barely move. He looks around for Percy to beg him to save them. Rose has never felt so powerless, but somehow Percy isn't there now. Instead, he sees another of his sons, Winter, who takes his father's hand. Hey, lie back, Dad.
"What are you trying to say?" "Your mother. June." Rose points. He can't tell if his son understands, but he sees Winter scramble off in that direction. Now Rose is alone on the roof, and the pain in his collarbone and face is growing worse. He's shivering as well. Between the rain, the water, and the wind, it's freezing up here. He nearly blacks out, and has to shake his head to stay awake.
He looks around for Percy or Winter, but the only person nearby is a bald man missing one boot, resting atop the wreckage next to their house. Rose thinks he recognizes him, but isn't sure. Regardless, maybe the man can help. "My son's in the water," the stranger bends down to listen. "I'm not following you. Say it again?" But Rose can't. He shakes his head, and the tears start pouring out.
The bald man tries to comfort him and gets him to lie back, but Rose is inconsolable. His entire family could be drowned or missing, and there's not a thing he can do to save them. John McKeed clings to the bars of his jail cell, shoving his face as far as he can between them. He's screamed himself hoarse. Even standing on the concrete bench, the water is already up to his neck, but there's no answer.
The roar of the water is too loud. He's not even sure anyone could hear him. Desperate, McKee turns sideways and tries squeezing himself through the bars of his cell. He's skinny. Maybe he can fit. He gets one leg through. And an arm. Next is his torso. He pushes as hard as he can. So hard his ribs crush his lungs and he can't breathe anymore. The pain and pressure are excruciating. He has to stop.
He catches his breath and tries again, pushing even harder. It's no use. The bars are too narrow to slip between you.
Now the water is up to his mouth. It's muddy and filthy. He quickly gives up all thought of escape. His only goal now is to survive. To get as high up as possible and hope the water leaves him a pocket of air to breathe. The cell's bars run up to the ceiling. They're mostly vertical, but near the top there's one horizontal bar connecting the rest.
McKee strips his sopping coat off his body and whips it up over his head, wrapping it around the horizontal bar. Grunting and kicking, he pulls himself up as high as he can go. Thankfully, the seams of the jacket hold and he manages to get his head a few inches above the water. But that's as high as he can go. In seconds, his face is pressed against the ceiling.
He punches it, hoping to smash through, but it's concrete and it leaves his knuckles bloody. "Help!" Finally, there's just a sliver of air above him. McKee screams one last time, then takes the biggest breath he can as the water laps the ceiling. He keeps his eyes shut tight, trying to stay calm and hold his breath as long as possible.
A full minute passes, and the water hasn't gotten any lower. He can't hold his breath forever. He finally exhales and gasps and breathes in one last burning lungful of dirty water. Victor Heiser lies sprawled out on the red roof of his family's barn. He's gripping an edge of the corrugated tin as the current rushes him away from his home. Toward, he's not sure what.
In the few minutes since the barn roof was torn free, Victor has had several close calls, near collisions with a freight car and a bale of barbed wire. Now his makeshift raft is jolted by something from behind, and Victor is nearly knocked off into the dirty, churning water. He glances back over his shoulder to see what hit him. It's a dead horse. Its eyes are wide open and its tongue wallowing out to the side.
After their collision, it goes bobbing away, pulled in another direction by the swirling currents. Then, Victor hears someone yelling. He squints into the rain. About 30 yards away, he spots Mrs. Fenn, a regular customer of his parents. She has six rambunctious children, but she's alone now, clinging to a wooden barrel, barely able to stay afloat.
The barrel is oozing black sticky tar, and it's smeared all over her face. She wipes some of it out of her eyes now and catches sight of Victor. "Victor! Help me!" Victor hesitates. He is a strong swimmer. Does he dare jump in? But the current is taking her away from him. Before he can make a move, Mrs. Fenn is 40 yards away, then 50.
There's nothing he can do to help her. He looks ahead again, and he sees a new problem. His tin roof raft is bearing down on one of the few houses that hasn't been swept off its foundation. If a dead horse was almost enough to knock him off his roof, he doesn't stand a chance against the house. The collision will send him into the churning water for sure, but what can he do?
The home's roof has a steep pitch to it, and the eaves are three feet above the floodwaters. Can he make the jump? He doesn't have time to debate it. As the house gets closer, he rises into a crouch, readies his legs, and springs up.
He can tell immediately that it's not a good jump. His raft shifts under his weight, throwing him off balance, so he doesn't get much height. His shin slams into one of the eaves and he yelps in pain. But he manages to cling to the roof anyway. Despite the pain in his shin, he feels giddy. He's safe, at last.
He quickly scrambles to his feet, searching for Mrs. Fenn. Then he hears an all too familiar noise. Just like with the barn before, the building he's standing on starts quaking. Then a wall buckles and the roof starts tilting toward the water. Victor's bare feet slip on the shingles and he starts sliding down. He's seconds from being tossed into the flood. Like a monkey, he scrambles on all fours up the roof,
trying to get away from the water as the roof tilts even more steeply. He's fighting gravity, and he's losing. It's all he can do to avoid tumbling backward. Above him, he sees the eaves at the roof's edge, pointing up toward the gray sky. He makes a flying leap and snags hold, ignoring the pain as the jagged eaves dig into his palms. But the roof keeps rising.
With a creaking sound, the roof suddenly stops tilting. It's become more of a wall, pitched vertically out of the water at a 90-degree angle. Now Victor is dangling 20 feet in the air by his fingertips, and he has no idea how long he can hold on before he plummets into the raging floodwaters below.
This is the third episode of our four-part series, Johnstown Flood. A quick note about our scenes. In most cases, we can't exactly know what was said, but everything is based on historical research. If you'd like to learn more about this event, we recommend the book Johnstown by David McCullough.
I'm your host, Mike Corey. Sam Keen wrote this episode. Our editor is Steve Fennessy. Sound design by Rob Schieliga. Audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Coordinating producer is Desi Blaylock. Produced by Emily Frost and Alita Rosansky. Managing producer is Matt Gant. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Senior producers are Andy Herman and Rachel Matlow. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
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