The Johnstown Dam Disaster and Flood 1889 | A Plainly Difficult Documentary 

It's a very informative video. My only suggestion would be to also add metric units.

great video as always :) my suggestion is the san bruno pipeline explosion in 2010, which killed 8 people. thanks!

Henry clay frick had the dam cut down to widen the road so his wider carriage could go over the road

Found this channel recently and have been binging over the last week. Very well put together, accurate, and informative vids! I would suggest maybe in the future covering the Sverdlovsk anthrax leak in 1979. It seems pretty appropriate for this channel. Keep up the great content. 😸

Holy shit thank you! Ive been asking you and another channel to do a video on this! The johnstown flood is hardly ever talked about and it was one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. This holds a special place in my heart as I am currently a resident of Johnstown, PA. I drive under the stone bridge that stopped the flood every single day on the way to work.

This just in - I'm being told I've misunderstood the title

😂😂

😆 You didn't fail to make me laugh!

Nope, I am! Just ask my wife😁

Classic comment, man. I loved it. 😅😅😅😅

Imagine being one of those people who are alive after the initial torrent, but you've been beaten and torn up by all kinds of debris AND barbed wire. That's a new kind of hurt right there, literally since barbed wire was still fairly new back then.

he forgot to mention that the pile also caught fire while they where trying to get to people, I work in the town from time to time and every business down there has pictures taken from the area before and after. Its crazy even the small towns of South Fork and Wilmore still have signs to the water destruction.

Imagine the utter horror of being one of the rescue workers trying to reach someone who needs your help... and you can't, because every chunk of rubble or shovel full of mud is full of barbed wire. Able to see the victim, but not even able to reach out a hand to comfort them without getting shredded.

... and it's all on fire.

I was 12 when I had my first summer job... farm hand... and there was a spirited (read "high strung") young colt new to the farm at the time... Late that summer the colt got tangled in the barbed wire fence... and I was out doing rounds (repairing fence and setting salt licks) with one of the older hands... The colt was freaking right out, and everything we tried to do just seemed to make everything worse... There was so much blood, and it was screaming and thrashing... kicked the sh*t out of both of us, but me because I wouldn't leave the little feller... I couldn't just leave him like that... ...and then the shot... It was quick... clean... a .22 right behind the ear... only an entry... and almost immediately the legs tensed and then went slack... and we both fell over... It took me almost a minute to realize what had happened. Sometimes it just hurts too bad to be able to sit still and just let someone help... AND then the more anyone tries to help the worse it seems to get... making you jump and recoil or thrash and kick more... and... "the vicious cycle"... and around and around it goes... ...until someone PUTS an end to it. GOD I hope I'm wrong about some of that, but I know (somehow) I'm probably not... and I don't know what hurts worse. ;o)

Blood is thicker than fast moving water.

Cuz, huh??? Let me take a guess, you're cousins' from New Jersey, and let me take a wilder guess, you're from Philly, correct, 🤔 hmmm………

@@rogerrendzak8055 schizo moment

@@rogerrendzak8055 someone throw them in a loony bin

Absolutely top notch comment, thanks for the added info. Very cool to not only live in a pre-flood house, but to confirm that fact by finding the evidence of the attic escape hatch. Thanks for sharing!

The Stonycreek is not a tributary. The Stony and Little Conemaugh form the Conemaugh at their confluence, just like the Allegheny and the Monongahela form the Ohio.

Thanks for sharing this. It makes me wonder what else immulates a prior event in cartoons or movies that don't make it obvious like "Titanic"

Disney's greatest stories were never imagineered by Disney. It's easier to steal greatness, isn't it Walt ??

@@gwhizz5878 Disney robs the public domain of intellectual property, and then works to extend copyright laws to prevent new works for entering public domain.

@@gwhizz5878 Get over yourself. Most great stories started as real life events in some shape or form. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. Walt would be dethawing if he could see what the woke mob is doing to his life's work.

@@pamike4873 Disney are the biggest woke mob around. Look at who you are defending, P(in the)A Micky. Look in the magic mirror, hypocrite.

From Altoona myself...

Me too. Indiana. I'm in Pittsburgh now but I still remember the last time I went to Johnstown. Man... It's in bad shape. I really hope it finds a way out of the poverty it's in

I live fairly close to Johnstown too. I visited their flood museum about a year ago and it was very interesting.

@@shroompicn-shrooman State College, small world haha

Harrisburg here

Yeah there's a 3 pig tale that has emphasized this for hundreds of years

Yes, even beavers use heavier structural material. I choked on my drink when he said that.

So you're saying a bit of hay and mud wont have much effect holding back 3+ billion gallons of water? But what if its got electrolytes?

@@dondajulah4168 it’s what plants crave

@@lkracker7 Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Yea nothing like the fire dept coming around and telling everyone to evacuate... for a few minutes we seriously thought we were going to have the 4th Johnstown flood

Very true

It was just shocking to me how the "redesign" used absolutely everything you probably shouldn't put into a dam with more than an acre's worth of water behind it. :shakes head:

C'mon only a fool would use just mud. They used mud AND straw

Mud is no good. Mud and straw - that's why the Hoover dam is still standing. Right? Oh wait.....

@@volvo09 mud, straw, and a healthy supply of gumption

Wow, a second event? Is it worth a part 2?

@@FlyingSavannahs Most likely. I'm not sure of the extent of the destruction compared to the one covered here, but it was really bad from what I understand.

The 1977 flood was due to natural causes and excess rain waters. There were floods in 1936, 1972, 1977 were all due to rains and natural causes.

@@Twitch0331 Great! Bring on the ineptitude.

@@FlyingSavannahs the 1977 floods are the third event, the St Patrick's Day floods in 1936 are the second event

The water tables across America are at crisis point if the wild fires and constant industrial and domestic pollution persists new solutions and sources may need be acquired from the North Canada take note.

I live in Scranton Pa, not far from where the Knox Mine Disaster, 1972 Agnes flood happened. Centralia is about an hour away as well.

@@PapaTanGh0stNI9htM4R3S0nMaInSt "MAY"??? Where the f*** is anyone going to get water when everything within a mile of the surface is toxic, radioactive, or so full of bacteria, it's going to rot your guts out as fast as it quenches any thirst??? "May"... he says, like there's an option... Maybe folks will just learn to drink piss... Maybe we'll discover a new species of human that doesn't actually need water... ain't 70% liquid... Maybe we'll start life anew with a silicon basis instead of carbon... and be able to regenerate our health by chewing broken glass, too. "May".... hahahahahahahaha.... ;o)

@@MrChopsticktech Yeah Centralia is one of those places that landfill burning got out of control.

@@PapaTanGh0stNI9htM4R3S0nMaInSt The operative term is "WILL" need be sourced or discovered... blah-blah-blah... There is nothing "may" about it... (lolz) ;o)

I have already done a video on it

It wouldn't be hard to be a worse release than 3 mile Island, it only released a little bit of hydrogen

@@markshort9098 Not just hydrogen. A small amount of Xenon and Iodine gas was released, but the amounts were so small it didn't even reach the insignificant stage.

Thanks for listening

@@PlainlyDifficult Great work man keep it up you absolutely deserve success and $$$.

Lmao.

@Andy Wehrle and almost 2021

He mentions it at 10 min in

The corrupt city council and the fact that they decided in the early 2000s to start importing drug addicts from New York and Philly didn't help.

Yeah I won't even step foot in Johnstown 😬 that place has become outright dangerous imo.

Thank you!

How am I today years old...and just now finding out about this. I used to live 3 miles from the WVDP and still live only about 40 miles south of it. But, never has it been discussed that the West Valley Demonstration Project Act of 1980 was signed into law to remediate this facility just 24 days before my birth...............locally there was no discussions about it, when I lived there it was just accepted the Federal Government owned the facility...but no one seems to know about this law or why the Feds own the property.

@@natpaul3777 that's interesting. WVFD's logo also has an atom on it as well lol. Story time. They had box cars loaded with contaminated soil and had to get it out of there. So one night, they took them all out without telling anyone (not even the local fire departments) needless to say folks weren't too happy. They do sketchy stuff like that every now and then. They still let people hunt the property every so often to curb the deer population.

Note, this is only the FIRST time johnstown was flooded. I hope PD covers the other 2 as well.

General fund?! Lol, it goes to line pockets of politicians and their business friends. Some of you are so naive its dangerous and cute at the same time.

@@fire_n_ice1984 how is tax money laundered straight to politicians pockets? You don’t seem to to realize how corruption functions, just offering blind and naive assumptions, unless you have a source?

.... Are you serious? You know... I always wondered why my jack Daniels was $22 and it's far cheaper in other states.

Wow... You're not kidding. "The liquor tax was made permanent in 1951, and it was increased to 15 percent in 1963 and then in 1968 it was increased to 18 percent. So anyone who purchases liquor in the state of Pennsylvania is still paying for that disaster, even though the actual disaster was paid for decades ago" Hey, if I'm paying a tax for Johnstown it should go to Johnstown! That town really could use that money!

@@jacksonbarker7594 It's overyly simplistic and cynical to suggest that it goes directly to politicians' pockets, but it's not far off from how corruption works. The most common political corruption scheme is to take kickbacks from overpriced government contracts, which might very well be paid from that general fund.

That's because the river from the dam linked to the Ohio River miles downstream.

@@dragonbornexpress5650 huh, didn't know it was a tributary. Now I feel like a fool

As a fellow swede I thank you for this tip. Never heard of it. Tack, precis vad jag behövde 10 minuter efter läggdags. :D

@Chuckles the Great. Sorry, why use the ending term, 'cheers'? You do know, that's strictly a British, thing 🤔?

Thank you!

Thank you for watching

@@Stevie-J [ ] You've been hit by, you've been struck by, A new video

@@Stevie-J I'm an insomniac but it's led me to these replies which made me laugh so it's all good. :)

@@NM-wd7kx this is great. Gave me a smile this morning :)

I'm moving to Johnstown in a bit and when I told my mom she was like "ah, where the flood was". I was born in 1986 (in NJ) and had no idea and researched it. Now RU-vid recommends me any videos on Johnstown flood lol.

I hope to see somebody cover the Helicopter Accident in Derry PA 1978.. The whole town has PTSD, I worked in Derry for years and you still are not able to bring it up, people are still very much affected by what happened. Truly terrifying some of the stories I have heard.

Pretty horrible!

Not just that, but full blown trains too along with miles worth of railroad tracks twisted into metal pretzels.

@@dragonbornexpress5650 And it caught on fire, because why not?! 😔

@@PresidentOfBepis Not to make light of it, but this is the Sharknado of disasters.

@@merc7105 “well it can’t get any worse.” “…it’s worse.”

Courts took the bait and swam off.

Groan..

Thank you for watching

It's interesting that most people in the city itself, don't know much about the history. I lived, went to college, and worked there for about ten years. They *know* there were floods. Most bring up the 77 flood. This is due to that being in recent memory for over 50% of the population

I think you are right

Much appreciated!

I also read about this dam failure in the same book! As well as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Thank you for the suggestion

@Vivmiester. Hello, from one history buff, to another 😉!

The stuff of nightmares

Not just that, but full blown locomotives too. That's also not mentioning the flood was also carrying two entire freight trains when the dam overflowed along with trees and other stuff before it even hit the town.

don’t forget that a lot of that stuff was on fire too!

Thank you

Good spot!