8. Although Their Decision Killed Thousands, These Rich Folk Walked Away Scot Free – Injustice Was Served this Day
Western Pennsylvania experienced the heaviest rainfall ever recorded there in late May, 1889, when up to ten inches fell in twenty four hours. As water levels in Lake Conemaugh rose ominously on May 31st, the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club’s manager led laborers in a frantic attempt to unclog the dam’s spillway. They were unsuccessful, and efforts to dig a new spillway were equally fruitless. Around 2:50 that afternoon, the dam, which contained nearly four billion gallons of water, began to collapse. A wall of water thirty to forty feet high and as wide as the Mississippi River rushed downstream at speeds of up to forty miles per hour. It destroyed all in its path. The torrent sucked people from their homes, swept trains, and slammed massive piles of debris into bridges and buildings.
Bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati, 400 miles away, in a catastrophe that killed 2209 people, including 400 children. More than 1600 homes were demolished, and the damage exceeded $4.4 billion in current dollars. It was America’s deadliest non-hurricane flood. As the shock wore off, it was replaced by anger as people’s gazes turned towards those responsible. However, the private resort’s rich owners were never held accountable. They claimed that their modifications of the dam did not hurt anybody and made no difference, because they had only lowered it by one foot. Their lawyers argued that the flood was “an act of God”. Evidence emerged in 2013 that they had actually lowered the dam by three feet, which drastically increased the risk of a breach. That came too late for the victims: they lost every case brought against the resort’s owners, and the plutocrats got away off scot-free.
