Don't always raise all boats... Especially if your caught without one, in northwestern Pennsylvania.
Today marked the 30th anniversary of the Johnstown floods in July of '77.
July 19-20, 1977, eighty-five people were killed in and around Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from a massive flash flood. No flash flood in the United States since then has killed more people. Found out how it happened here:
http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/
http://www.jaha.org/FloodMuseum/history.html
Randomly came across this today while trying find some weather info for work. Thought it woud be worth sharing had no one realized themselves.
A lot has happened since then... yet, we still seem as hopelessly at the mercy of things well beyond control. Or at least that is what some people would like you to believe. When will we start to learn to take action before it's too late? In this case, the storms that caused the flooding came on a lot faster than the more recent gaff that cost a lot of people their lives.
Thoughts anyone?
Down in the Flood - Bob Dylan
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7 comments:
tragic & amazing...my Uncle Frankie used to show me pictures he took of The Great Flood of Johnstown...it was in 1889...I'll bring some of the photos back from PGH next week...
Is that different then the one I was referencing? The dates are way off.
you're right on...two different floods...in 1889 a "long neglected" dam broke during a huge storm and over 2000 people died...the proverbial lightning striking twice is what makes them so scary now...
I was thinking today how I often find myself teetering on the edge of holding things together and falling apart (esp with moving and scheduling etc) and then I remembered a wise man once telling me that "control" is an illusion - and when we can accept that, we no can longer believe that things are spinning out of control.
Applying the same logic... tragic events such as these can neither be predicted nor controlled.
i think you just need more tape.
While the thought of "control" being an illusion is an appealing one that on some levels I do agree with. At least specifically speaking of these types of disasters, they can be predicted and the outcome of them at least in some part can be controlled by not being so apathetically resigned to there outcome.
Which I unfortunately feel has become a policy our fearful leaders have taken up time and time again.
The Johnsontown flood was one of, if not the first, non-battlefield emergency that the American Red Cross responded to. Granted it was, at the time, only Clara Barton and 4 or 5 others and it took them 5 days to get there from DC... but something tells me that there mode of transportation needed to be fed more often than what we have at our disposal today.
http://www.jaha.org/FloodMuseum/RedCross.html
Good to see more blog entries on the Johnstown Floods, especially 1977...it almost seems to be a forgotten flood.
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