On this day in Labor History the year was 1889.
Nestled in western Pennsylvania was the community known as Johnstown.
The town and surrounding area was home to 23,000 people, families of workers who labored in the regions’ booming steel mills.
Those who lived in the town had to deal with the soot that fell on their homes from the billowing smokestacks of the mills.
Just Fifteen miles above Johnstown there stood a very different place.
The South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.
This was an exclusive area of summer homes for some of the leading industrialists of the day, including Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and Henry Clay Frick.
The club members enjoyed fishing and recreating on the 500-acre manmade Lake Conemaugh.
The 72 foot high 931 foot wide dam which created the lake was made of earth, and in poor repair.
Drainage pipes that were supposed to regulate the lake had been removed, sold for scrap, and were not replaced.
Despite repeated warnings of the dam’s problems, repairs were not made.
And so on a rainy day in May the lake swelled.
Recognizing the dam was in trouble, workers were scrambled to attempt to fortify the dam.
But the effort came too late.
The dam failed catastrophically hurling 20 million tons of water into the valley below.
The wall of water reached forty feet high and half a mile wide, and carried the force of Niagara Falls.
2,209 people died in the flood, including 99 whole families.
One body was recovered all the way in Cincinnati. 1,600 homes were destroyed and there was $17 million in damages.
The site became the first peace-time effort for Red Cross relief led by Clara Barton.
Not surprisingly The South Fork Club was never held legally responsible.
The courts ruled the flood “an act of God.”
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