No one talks about that. No one talks about how the fishing and that club went down him. You know what, there's a reason for that, Paul.
I'm just be honest, that's a kind of a shitty take, because, like I mean, I'm paying top dollar to be in this hunting fishing club and fish. How good was that fishing here? Really good? Right? Damn it? Hey, I've at helms and welcome back to Snapfoo, a show about history's greatest screw ups, more specifically, a show in which I
walk my wonderful guests through distinctly unwonderful moments from the past. Today, we'll be covering the infamous Johnstown flood of eighteen eighty nine, and our guest, Well, he's truly one of the best in the biz. And I mean that in both the general sense in that he's just an awesome dude, but also he is someone who is just constantly crushing it
across like every platform in the whole business. You might know him from TV shows like The League or Black Monday, or his uber popular podcasts How Did This Get Made? And unspooled? Please welcome my very dear old friend, the great Paul Sheer Ed so.
Excited to be here because honestly, it's the only time I've ever get any validation. You Just reading off those credits made me feel good. I'm like, oh wow, I mean I didn't even mention your book. You just had a You just wrote a book.
I have a book. You know.
Look, you and I are now authors, We are best selling authors.
Very exciting, It is very exciting. I'm very proud of us. I was trying to think back to the origin of our friendship, and it just it falls into that huge basket of just wonderful people orbiting the UCB Theater in New York City around what like nineteen ninety nine.
Right in that area, because you know, it's it's interesting. There's certain people that like Jason Manzucas. Obviously we co host this podcast together. I know Jason for many years. But Jason was not somebody that was invited to my wedding, which is a crazy thing because we weren't that close at that point in our He's definitely a friend. He didn't get that cut. He didn't make that cut. I was at your wedding, you were, and the all the time, I was.
Like, where is Jason? Why this is horrible. Meanwhile, Jason gave a toast at my wedding. As a matter of fact.
It's wild to me that I talked to him all the time and he was somebody that was not that was just not a close friend at that moment.
Yeah, but you're so right in that. I feel like there's so many people from that community that I they somehow like merged with our DNA at that time. It's like we we knew each other when we were just comedy Larva wriggling around.
We were performing in an old strip club where sometimes you'd be doing a show and people would get up and leave and you're like, did I do a bad job? Like, no, they just thought they were coming to a strip club, and we're very confused for the first forty five minutes of the show. Exactly likely, this is great, but when are they going to take off their clothes?
I remember there was a basement that you would get to through a trap door basically.
And here the most rookiety wooden staircase all time to get down it.
And you would go down there and it was like a grotto from from like sixteenth century Paris, wet brick walls and dirt floor.
It was a it was a New York City catacomb, if you will, that's what it was. Oh, I mean you would see the craziest stuff and it was only one way in and one way out. Wait, somebody was giving haircuts down there, well, haircuts down there and on stage. Yeah, one of the one of the resident teachers.
Yeah, a legend, one of the originals.
No audience, no audience, really crazy. That should have been its own show, the Haircuts. Weirdly, it would have found an audience too, I'm sure, actually more palatable than some of the shows that we did experiment with. Well as as one of the OG podcasters and one of one of the greats in the podcasting is thank you No truly like you've You've.
Carked out such an awesome niche. It's been so cool to see you do a lot of shows in the studio, you do a lot of shows live on tour. Do you have a preference? I think yeah.
For me, I think there's something really fun about when it's just Jason, June and I chatting with each other. I think that that's always really a blast and we're not playing for lass, but when we do it in front of an audience. It's I like that. I like the showmanship of it. I like I like getting out
in front of an audience. I like finding where the jokes are, finding what they find funny, and kind of chasing that because sometimes also it can get almost so what I love about the studio is it's so casual that sometimes you are just having a conversation and maybe that's okay too, but like you forget like oh we gotta like hit some more jokes or or that one thing is funny, like and I didn't even think it was that fun. Well, are you ready? I'm thrilled. I'm
such a fan of Nephu. The book was great, I loved the podcast. But the thing is is I also have experience with floods here because I'm not not a major flood but we've I've had some flooding issues in La.
In La, you can't get over it.
I mean, obviously there's natural disasters are awful, but flooding is like it's infuriating because it's all there, but it's all wrecked and you can see it and you can't stop.
It and it's and it's it.
You feel like powerless as the water comes in and you're sleeping and I flooded. I mean I did also flood my own house too, and I have experience in floods.
I'm excited. I'm concerned about you and your lack of water maintenance. So, as I mentioned before, we're going to be talking about the Johnstown flood of eighteen eighty nine.
Not the Jonestown. Not the Jonestown. Different flood.
Cool also different disaster, Yeah, very different kind of disaster. Do you know anything about the Johnstown flood? Never heard a thing? Okay? Oh good? Well, I mean not good. You should know better, honestly. Okay, sorry, but this will be fun because it's all fresh. Our story begins in central southwestern Pennsylvania, a bustling, bucolic little city. Now, just to orient you, Johnstown is about fifty two miles east of Pittsburgh. Founded in eighteen hundred by Swiss immigrant Joseph John's.
It is nestled at the confluence of the Stony Creek and Little Conamaw rivers. Now just fourteen miles upstream from Johnstown on the Little Kanamau River is the South Fork Dam. You know, cue the spooky music, because that's going to be real important, real soon. I know you're you're from Long Island originally. Do you know this area at all? Like Western DBA, very familiar with this area. This is right in my wheelhouse. As far as places I know, likee from, like getaways as a family.
Yeah, I mean, look, I've been to sesame place, w whag is in Pennsylvania or Hershey Park.
You got all the amusement parks dialed in? All right?
Well?
Eighteen eighty nine, Johnstown is thriving. It was basically the rust Belt before it got rusty. Deal was king thanks to the mighty Cambria Iron Company. Nearby coal mines kept the fires burning, and the bustling, dense railroad lines all tied it together. This was a blue collar boomtown, and as a result, European immigrants were pouring in looking for work. The population exploded by roughly thirty thousand people in the
mid eighteen hundreds. Now, on paper, Paul, explosive growth is great, right, But is it always good for a community?
No?
I know, is it just an efficient way to stress people out? I mean, I know this from many years of playing the SIMS video game. You can't field too quick. Things happen.
You know you can't. You can't keep supply and demand.
Yeah, there's a lot of jobs, but then you know there're enough sewage plants exactly.
You know, things happens as someone who's known you a long long time. So many of us have been trying to pull you out of sim City. And I'm not even in the sims. I'm not even doing the people. I can't. I'm so worried about when sim goes VR and you'll, like, just you'll be so immersed. I got to put this baseball stadium somewhere. Well, you know, rapid growth can often lead to corner cutting as well, and boy,
will that come into play, so watch out. At some point, the State of Pennsylvania, or as it's formerly known, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, sold two of its major infrastructure assets, the Western Division Canal and the aforementioned South Fork Dam, to a private investor named Henry Clay Frick. All Right, I hope, I wish this is the origin of the term Frickin'. I don't know if that's true, but there will be good reason for it.
Henry Clayflick does feel to me like a I don't know if this is the appropriate term, but like a robber baron.
He has his name of it. Okay. He was like buddies with Carnegie and Melon and all those guys. So Frick was a rising industrial heavyweight in his thirties, juggling coal, steel, and of course the society clubs, with a knack for turning big risks into even bigger fortunes. Naturally, the steel tycoons first order of business upon this purchase was to convert the sleepy Lake Conomaw above the dam into wait
for it, the south Folk Hunting and Fishing Club. Oh, because ye as we all know, rich people love to hang out with other rich people and just shoot things.
Well, I mean you have to. I mean you know that's the thing. What are you going to do with your spare time about that?
Now?
This is interesting though, because you're saying it's a working class town. That now is kind of it's kind of gentrifying itself in a way.
Right. Yes, Now, this is fourteen miles upstream of Johnstown. So we're in and it's and it's a significantly higher elevation. We're maybe like five hundred feet higher in the mountains.
Okay, and I guess thirteen miles in the eighteen hundreds. Is that's a that's a far day like right now a little bit. Yeah, that's yeah. We ain't got the model t yet.
So yeah, it's like a resort and the lake is kind of dumpy when he buys it. But his goal is to is to really make it this beautiful place just for rich people to hang out and I guess scoff at poor people maybe, is that another one of their hobbies.
It's perfect because you're high enough and you can look down. Yeah, you can shoot a bird and then look down at the poor people and laugh at them as you eat.
Yeah, your squab exactly. So to do this, to make this resort, Frick and his resort investor Buddies lowered the dam head to put a road across the top of it, which reduced the dam's safety margin. He also sold off the dam safety pipes and valves for scrap, and he did not replace them. He slapped a fish screen over the spillway to ensure good fishing. Yeah, they stocked this lake with lots of good fish, because keep in mind, it is a hunting and fishing club. Yeah, you got
to have them. You if it's in the name, you got to make sure the fish are in the lake.
Right, and you want to make sure it's easy to catch those fishes so you feel good about it.
Yeah, you familiar stock that thing. Yeah. And now meanwhile, they're also just patching various leaks in this dam. It's a giant earthen dam with mud and straw and basically treating critical infrastructure like a summer tiki bar. Now this is all because some rich guys really really wanted a pretty lake, and they wanted it fast and cheap. And I don't know, this is a kind of horrifying pattern in class dynamics when rich people make terrible decisions like this.
Do you think it's honest ignorance with maybe a dash of optimism bias, or is it just straight up willful negligence?
You know, I never think that people truly are out to hurt other people. I don't think it's like, well, we're gonna flood this down because it doesn't make it's not good business sense. But I feel like you can you can talk somebody into a bad idea really quickly, where it's like, well, you know, we're just gonna lower that.
It's already high, We're just gonna lower it a little bit we.
Need a road across the top, and it's right, and then that's actually gonna help us. And it's a bunch of small things that make sense, but then when you pile them all together, it is disaster. The thing that I'm curious about that you said that really jumped out to me was like he took away the safety gauges of the of the damn.
Yeah, there were pipes and valves built in that that were part of the release mechanism for for oh you know, it's.
Like that's a hard one to kind of smooth over that for no reason.
Yeah, I mean, if you really dig into this, which I encourage listeners to read more about this. David mccullaugh wrote an incredible book about the John Sound flood, and it's pretty I'm like you, I want to give some benefit of the doubt, and because I think there's a ton of just optimism bias in people like this where it's just sort of like, I mean, this can't happen, and it's like or this is too that's too crazy to even contemplate that this whole massive dam could fail.
Sorry spoiler alert, but we're gonna we're gonna get there. Wait a second. Yeah, Now, here's the good news is that this club, but once it was finished, was enormously successful and many of the richest men in the world joined this club, making it instantly profitable. Now, this was the largest reservoir in the country at the time. Okay, it's about two miles long, roughly one mile wide, and
sixty feet deep. Lake Kanamah had basically become a summer paradise. Meanwhile, fourteen miles downstream, Johnstown was churning away as the industrial little trooper town that it was, and to make room for this massive influx of workers that was occurring, the steel mills had begun dumping a lot of their slag, or the industrial refuge from the steelmaking process. They were dumping this slag into the river to build up more
land where they could build more homes. Of course, this had the unfortunate effect of narrowing the river bed, which was sort of clogging it like an artery, and it just was making it more prone to flooding. Basically, Johnstown now had the cardiovascular health of a chain smoking borsch belt Loungejack.
Yeah, so we really are we're basically we've created like again spoiler alert the flood. We are creating the perfect the perfect storm, really like we're building it.
Oh you stole my setup. Oh no, the perfect storm. Yeah, I mean, I'm just gonna read it anyway, but it's but no, you hit it right on the head. Basically, you've got an entire region undergoing massive, very short sighted infrastructure changes, and they are all of these things are coalescing into wait for it, say it, the per perfect storm, which is sadly the perfect metaphor because the actual perfect
storm is about to hit. Uh. Do you ever feel that that movies and history both build tension the same way, Like everything kind of feels fine, and there's that that first act of a movie where you're just sort of building the Djenga tower and then.
Just relaxed into it and you feel like nothing can go wrong. I mean, Titanic is a perfect example of it. James Cameron's Titanic. You're it looks what a wonderful film, what a beautiful boat, what great people?
Yes? And then watch Out Yeah. Oh, and also Titanic, that's another, that's another great example of the class dynamics at play. The storm is upon us. A note to my sound editor, please add some sound effects and posts. Thank you very much. It's late day. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, ye, it's not very good. Yeah, you know, Michael Winslow, let's be a man. And you know what, I lost that part to bad in the reboot of course. All right,
it's late. It's late May eighteen eighty nine. A low pressure system, that is that had formed over Nebraska and Kansas two days earlier, was now a massive storm directly over western central Pennsylvania, and it was for real, very scary. It was the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the Eastern United States to date. Estimates say that six to ten inches of rain fell in twenty four hours. I always feel like those metrics are like, what, like, what does
that mean? Six to ten inches isn't very tall. But then you're like, oh, I guess that is actually crazy relative to what was normal for the time. And here's the other thing is that there were still snow in the mountains, So the rain is falling on the snow, which is creating even more water coming from the fresh snow melt. Creeks and streams were quickly overrun, taking down trees and other debris. Even telegraph lines and rail lines were starting to come down. This is just from the rainstorm.
We haven't even gotten to the real disaster yet. The next morning, it's May thirty first, the president of the Southfolk Fishing and Hunting Club, Elias Unger, awoke in itizzy. It was still pouring rain and as such that damn dam damn near was overflowing.
Well, now what do you do, May, because this is the moment where you know, like this is the problem with the natural disaster. You can see it start to come right like this is it like this morning?
He knows. But what can you do? You can't. You almost can't do anything to stop it at this point, can you? He tries. Hunger quickly gathered a group of men to unclog the debris. They'd put a fish strainer basically at the spillway to keep fish from leaving the lake, and so that was now completely clogged with debris and so no water was getting out of the lake. It was only rising. He sent one of his engineers, John Park, on a horse, down to the telegraph office.
Uh.
He wanted to issue a warning to the people of Johnstown. The damn was in danger of collapsing. Get out of there. Yeah, Now what the fantastic four new Glactus is coming there. Get out. Get out of the city, guys, get out of the city. I don't know what you're talking about,
but yes, exactly. This was tricky for two reasons. Number one, I would think that if like under this kind of duress, like sending a telegraph message actually tapping the thing, oh, it must have been like like so hard to do, right, Like you're just like because you're probably shaking, you're trembling, and it's like, well.
That's why you have to hire the best. It's like, you have to hire the best telegraph They have to be emotionless, you know, whether you're you're breaking up with your husband, you're telling somebody the loved one has died, or telling you that the an impending flood is happening.
Well, to make matters worse, a telegraph line were down, Well they're down, so we're didn't even didn't even get there. No messages were sent to Johnstown. And even so there were people racing down on horses and stuff, telling people. But there had been so many false alarms that the damn was going to burst over the previous decades that that there was also a kind of like blase sense about it.
This is the sky is falling kind of chicken little moment. Yeah, And this is why I think again, like we prepare a lot for something terrible. You know, you're always like ready for something bad to happen. And then I would say ninety five percent of the time the worst version doesn't happen, but you know, and then you're, oh, I prepared for nothing.
I did all the things.
So I can imagine here that they've probably had some moments like Okay, you know, they're not gonna they're not buying it.
That's the whole cry wolf scenario. You get kind of tired of freaking out and who knows. But this one, this one was real and it was real, real bad. There was a lot of drama at the top of the damn. Some guys were trying to actually stack more material on the top of it, but they could feel the dam moving and so they got off and that younger guy was like, get out there, and they were like, no, we're not going. Is this like an earth dam? Yes.
What's interesting about this type of dam is that when they do breach, it is almost always catastrophic because the flow of water instantly compromises the entire structure, and it begins just washing out the material of the dam as you can imagine. So at two point fifty pm, the dam is finally compromised and it collapses and the water just comes rushing out. Now, South Fork is the first little town to be hit by this flood. The town thankfully is on a little bit higher ground, but twenty
or thirty houses were still destroyed. Tragically, four people were killed in South Fork. The rest of the citizens were able to get to safety and time, but this flood was just beginning and a word of warning, it's about to get real grim. I got to ask you, Paul, if you were in like Johnstown or South Fork that day, would you be the guy like calmly sandbagging or you the guy sprinting for higher ground like it's the last chopper out of Saigon.
You know, it's interesting. My uh, my gut is always to be the calm sandbagger. My wife's job is to get the hell out, and that might be your job.
But what what are you doing? Like, what's your what's your what is your adrenaline telling you to do?
I always say that my wife and I are like kind of Kirk and Spock the way we look at things like, I'm I'm looking at it very logically, and my wife is like, let us go.
Oh. I love that.
I think in this moment, uh, you know, look, if my wife gets the urge to run, I'm going to be following her.
Yeah. I think at a certain point it's like, you know, when it's this insane and we're about to hear more about it, it's like, you just run best you can. The flood raced down the fourteen miles of the Little Konama River Valley, destroying everything in its path.
I mean, how quickly in seconds is minutes? What have we got here?
It's moving a lot faster than you can run. I'll put it that way, okay. At one point, the flood was briefly stopped by railroad bridge, but it eventually pushed past the bridge, gaining even more momentum. It raced through to more small towns with massive force, destroying literally everything. At this point, because the gorge is so deep, it's sort of like funneled, and the force of the water is so intense that it wipes these towns out to
the bedrock. There is nothing but bedrock left in the wake of the flood, and then Johnstown residents heard a deafening roar before they saw it, but most even had no idea that this roar could be a flood. Suddenly, a massive wall of debris slammed into first the Cambria Iron Works. The water swept up railroad cars, barbed wire, which was a product of these steel of these steel plants.
It then reached Gautier Wireworks, causing boilers to explode and emit black smoke, just making it a more nightmarish scenario. Just fifty seven minutes after the collapse of the dam, the flood reached the center of Johnstown, moving at a whopping forty miles per hour, and it was up to sixty feet high in some places. This wall of water and debris that was just like, you know, just rushing through.
Even knowing everything that I know in the movies that I've watched, and many of them like Day after Tomorrow, great films, the but like that sixty feet of water, right, and it's like and you're not You're not an island. It's not a tsunami, but it is acting like ana in a way. It really is acting a lot like a tsunami and or an avalanche. It's sort of a combination of the two.
And I remember, it's so funny because when I was a kid, you know, I would hear about tsunamis and I would be like, no big deal. I can swim. I can serve a good swimmer, you know, But like in this situation, you can't. Like, it doesn't even matter how how comfortable you are in the water, how good a swimmer you are, because there is it's barely water. It's just it's like debris. Yeah, you're you have a train wrapped in barbed wire heading for you, swimmer. Yes. Yes.
Johnstown residents were either crushed by debris or caught up in the barbed wire, or drowned in their homes or places of work. Some folks were able to stay afloat on debris waiting for help. Most people in this situation, they're it's they're overtaken so quickly and there's so much panic and chaos that you're just grasping for anything that you can grab onto.
But this is why I travel with two hundred pound weights on me at all times, just in case, you know, and keeps me ground.
Know you're legendary in the rucking community.
It's and it's a hard of go to restaurants things that goes out, but I'm ready for it.
It's a pain for all of us who are friends with you, but yeah, it's very cool. We respect you for it. Thank you. Yeah, and this is kind of reminiscent of Rose in the Titanic, right, you brought in the Titanic. She found a chunk of something to cling to. Yeah, I feel like there was room for Leo to have climbed up on there. But it's a big debate. I don't know, Well, you know, what did you bring this up? This just came up.
Now, obviously MythBusters put it to the test, but James Cameron was not happy with MythBusters and recently recreated the water temperature and the thing and basically proved that at the rate that Leo was hyperventilating and freezing, he could not have stayed that. Funny, it just I just saw it the other day, like he just did it the other debt. It's amazing, which is really funny to.
Me, so fun weird, little I wouldn't may maybe not a fun fact, but little additional Titanic connection here is that our buddy Frick had actually canceled his Titanic ticket because his wife had had a sprained ankle and had to be hospitalized. So this guy, he can avoid a disaster here and there. Anyway, back in the middle of Johnstown, this is crazy. The Pennsylvania Railroad stone Bridge, which was
this huge stone bridge in the middle of Johnstown. It became this kind of catch all filter which was so building up in this bridge was all of these twisted train rails and box cars and barbed wire and entire buildings and yes, sadly, of course, lots of bodies piling up against it, forming a temporary dam. Now, this dam, which was sort of catching the flood, redirected floodwaters upstream of the Stony Creek, which is the other river that kind of comes into the town of Johnstown. So now
there's there's the flood is going upstream Stony Creek. It reaches a sort of a point where gravity then overtakes it again and pulls it back, unleashing ace, unleashing a second wave that floods back into the city from the opposite direction, which is just completely bonkers.
It's almost overwhelming to even comprehend what is going on? It sounds like whoa but to be in it, to be there, It just seems like, well, no one can survive this. This is this is an insurvivable situation that you have presented.
It is nuts. Now it's about to get even more nuts. If you were writing this script, Paul Scheer, and you wanted things to get even worse in this moment, what would you do?
I mean, I want to break another dam. I want to I don't know, maybe a dual dams or gosh, I mean, come on, think it through a fire. We gotta have a fire. So we gotta have a fire. Okay, here's how things actually spiraled even more. Let's just throw in a completely new kind of natural disaster. The massive pile of flood debris at the Stone Bridge suddenly caught fire. At least eighty people were trapped inside the wreckage and
killed just in this inferno. The fire raged for three full days, lighting up the ruins of the city, which is just heartbreaking and incredible. Well, I imagine there's also gasoline, there's things that there's oil in there, there's things that fire.
Yeah, all the industrial waste of a big industrial town like piled up in there.
Yeah, that's gonna that's gonna keep it going. And trees like trees, which is just fire fuel. It's just like a big old mass of tons of trees that had been ripped out. So we got black smoke, we got waves, we got fires. This is truly a nightmare of this is epic.
It's epic.
This is like going on the ride at Universe Studios where they recreate the earthquake.
We're seeing of it. I'm gonna say it's a little worse than that, obviously, maybe k yeah, okay, all right, yeah, maybe they threw the the bag. So by the time this fire actually died out, the flood waters had receded, and Johnstown was left with a staggering thirty acre heap of wreckage. Oh my lord, in some places seventy feet high just the wreckage. This would take nearly three months to clear out. We have a famous image taken from the cleanup here. This is the Schultz family house. The
six people living in that house survived. Wow. This is an iconic photo that a lot of people think just sort of captures the insanity. There's so much cognitive dissonance looking at that.
It clearly went on a little bit of a journey, like this house is and not where it was, and wow, and the way that that tree goes through, like if you were picturing the house is like two eyes in a mouth. It's gone through one of the eyes of the top half of the windows there, and it's really yeah, oh it's massive.
Oh he'll need a glass eye for sure. I mean, let's get into the aftermath. The magnitude of the Johnstown flood was unimaginable. It ended in seventeen million in damage, which is six hundred million today. And this is a Remember this is a town of thirty thousand people. It's not like New York City, Like this is just an epic wipeout for this town. Two thousand, two hundred and nine people were killed, which made it the largest loss of civilian life my lord at the time.
All because a hunting and fishing club wanted to catch some fish a little bit easier.
Well, I guess, yeah, but yeah, I mean did you taste those fishball? I mean, it was so easy to catch, so easy to catch those fish. The loss of life was epic, and it wouldn't be surpassed until nineteen hundred when the Galveston hurricane hit, which was also another topic natural disaster. This is crazy. There were even reports of the flood carrying bodies as far as Cincinnati, Ohio like
way way down river. Reportedly, one baby survived on the floor of a house as it floated seventy five miles downriver from Johnstown.
Isn't that like baby Moses? Didn't they put baby Moses in one of those like a little carrier in the water. Is that baby Moses?
But he didn't wash away? They just hit him in the reeds.
And my buddy, Yeah, this little baby washed away seventy seventy five miles away, and wow, and it was fine.
And that little baby grew up to be me well ed. Ah, all right. So news spread rapidly to the surrounding areas, and support was provided in the form of clothing, disinfectants, fish bread, cigars, whiskey, and weirdly, twenty pounds of ham, among other useful items. There's a lot more to this recovery effort that I wish I could get into more,
because it's incredibly beautiful and cool. But this is one of the first large scale rescue efforts by the American Red Cross and It's sort of like a huge scale disaster relief and it really kind of changed the game for disaster response.
When you were saying this, I was starting to put together things. I remember, is this the first time that the Red Cross exists? Or no, the Red Cross didn't exist, but this is the first time they were called into action. I think it's the first time they were called into action in this capacity. Clara Barton was a huge part of this recovery effort and stayed in the region for a long period of time, kind of running logistics and
just further cemented her legendary status as a humanitarian. There's a part of me it goes, do you I mean, I guess you have to rebuild on some level you have to, But should I mean, I don't know. It's like is it worth Is it worth rebuilding? Because it could all happen again? And this is kind of the same thing that happens in New Orleans when the dam broke in New Orleans? Is this too dangerous to do again? I mean? Or do they find a way to just go?
You know what, We're gonna put more safety measures in yet.
Paul, I think you're forgetting that we're as a species like we're basically cockroaches, Like we just we just got to make it work wherever the hell we are and uh acres and start going again. Yeah, you're asking questions that really have no place here, Paul. No, but but but there certainly were a lot of kind of infrastructure considerations that went into the redevelopment and rebuilding of John's Town and the entire region that had been rather carelessly
handled and or completely overlooked obviously beforehand. The answer is, yes, they rebuilt. They felt the need to rebuild. It was a very strategic location for so many some of the industries at the time, and it was rebuilt a lot more safely. That did not prevent future floods. Unfortunately, there were future floods in Johnstown and still are time to time. But but it is it is much safer than, of course it was.
But the fishing has gone down, and and that's why that's why I stopped, you know, being a member of that club, because the back when the fishing was good for a little bit, and they really you know, it went down here after that. No one talks about that. No one talks about how the fishing and that club went down.
Now you know what, there's a reason for that, Paul. I'm just being honest.
That's a kind of a shitty take, because, like I mean, I'm paying top dollar to be in this hunting fishing club and I've got a lot.
Of auntish fishing really good, right, damn it? Okay, So let me just throw this out there, because in times of disaster or mass casualties like this, I think something incredible about human nature emerges. We raw for each other. We were just talking about some of the rescue efforts Claire Barton among others, and all of these incredible resources that just flooded into the region. Sorry for the terrible metaphor, but so much support came just kicked in from all around.
We rally for each other, We come together, We help each other in these ways that might have seemed unthinkable just a day before a tragedy like this. Do you agree that this is such an incredible thing of humanity? Do you see it around you sometimes? And why is it so fucking rare? Not that it's rare, but why do we have to wait for disasters for this side of us to emerge?
I you know, it's interesting. I will say that being in New York City during nine to eleven. It was I talk about this is like one of the most beautiful times post one to eleven in the sense of agreed, the way that the city came together neighbors and you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of good will. Yeah, and you know we even see out here at the fires that happened this year, like there's a lot of how do we make a difference, how do we pull together?
And you're right, and I think that ultimately we are society, you're cockroaches. We fall into patterns, and there are many people like a Claire Barton and many other wonderful people who devote their lives to making sure that everybody has the same access to whatever, and we just get selfish and we forget and we forget about it. And then every now and then we see a commercial or we hear about something, or we get caught up because we have a personal connection to it, and then we move
into action. But every now and then, when there's something that is undeniable where everybody kind of kicks and it's it's.
It's the best of us, yea, The worst of us can bring out the best of us. Now, of course, as soon as the floodwater was dry, people began to look for someone to blame for the tragedy, and it wasn't long before the town turned to the south Folk Fishing and Hunting Club, which you have to say, like that, the South Southfolk Fishing Hunting Con and of course our old friend Henry Clay Frick.
Now here's the question that I got for you. If I'm Henry Frick, I'm like, maybe I should have gone on that Titanic because I don't want to face the wrath well of this town.
He's gonna be fine, don't worry, Okay. Survivors of the flood sued the club. The American Society of Civil Engineers launched a massive investigation. It ultimately concluded that while the dam was modified to be less secure, it would have failed either way. Now, it should be noted that the American Society of Civil Engineers was bankrolled by legendary tycoon Andrew Carnegie. Wow Okay, okay, himself a member of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. Of course he was.
It was good fishing. So perhaps they were not the most neutral referee in this matter. And indeed, more research in recent times has very much questioned those findings. Still, the courts ultimately ruled the flood was merely a quote act of God.
Well, you know, here's something that's interesting about it. This is a bona fide natural disaster that maybe in a way was worsened by damn precautions or maybe even staved off for I don't know, Like you don't know. I think that sometimes these are the things that change our lives. The Titanic is sent like created all these regulations, like these OCEHA regulations, these.
Things that we would never have. I think you're being generous. Why am I on the side of the tacooons They shouldn't be on there. Always you're always thinking of for the for the moneyed interests. I just want to get that. I want to get that membership from back. Whether or not it was criminal, we can never know necessarily, but
but that bad mistakes were made. There's more details about someone who was offering to make the necessary fixes to the damn in advance of of all of this, and and they were just like I would be to inconvenient for the club, so we're not going to do it.
And well, yeah, because you don't want to have those people out there working. When you catch a fish, you don't bang and bang. Well, they probably have to drain the lake in order to make come here for peace of mind to get a bang bang bang bang bang.
Yeah, exactly right. Well, either way, without a legal obligation to do so, Frick and the club never accepted responsibility. This is what This is a very common theme throughout my study of tafoos. Virtually no one ever is held accountable in any way. Frick, however, did go on to be embroiled in other controversies, and he even did a few good things. Also, he amassed the incredible Frick art collection in New York City. Oh it's the same risk
that freaking guy. I love that art collection. Yes, the Frick. I took many trips to the Frick, and I enjoyed. I enjoyed the Frick, And now I am I am frustrated to know that what a scoundrel he might have been. But Frick was also part of the super Anti Union for that led to the violent homestead strike in eighteen ninety two. He even survived an assassination attempt during it. Not to tease you, but we will save that snapoo
for another day. Ooh, I love that. Indeed, we were talking before about some of the ways the infrastructure was improved after the flood. This is interesting. Johnstown built an inclined railway in eighteen ninety, which allowed folks to easily go back and forth from the nearby town of Westmont, which was at a much higher elevation, safer from flooding, et cetera, as well as safer from the leftover pollution. Here's a photo of the incline railway. We look at that. Great, So there go.
Yeah, so they made some changes, some good changes. But here's let I say, like, for somebody like Frick, do you think that he feels any responsibility or when you're in that level, the reason why you're that successful there, the reason why you're that wealthy is because you don't ever.
Navel gaze. You never you never think it's my fault. That is a great question, and it is one of the things that I never I just never understand about people who do like large scale, dastardly things, Like I think that in order to sort of persevere as a tycoon of this nature, like you have to have the most toxic coping mechanisms. You are never analyzing these things.
You're never even considering the possibility that you might be culpable, except in the in the possibility that you might face legal repercussions, in which case you're like mounting your legal defense. And it is it is amazing the extent to which powerful and or wealthy people escape culpability, both literally and to your question, I think even in their own conscience. I think on some.
Level every great leader, tycoon, even at fleet, has to have this ability to separate themselves from their actions, because I don't think you could go to bed at night. I always say that if every president has to be a little bit insane or at least narcissistic, because you're saying, I'm taking the whole world on my shoulders, and if people die you Eric, well, all right, I'll get them tomorrow. And you know, because you have to get back up.
They will. People will die under your watch as a president person.
And I think that's the thing that unites all these people, and for better and for worse, it's just a very I would even say Claire Barton probably is like that to a certain day.
I have to keep on moving. I can't take on all this grief yeah. Yeah, So finally, Paul Yes, being a guy who dissects Hollywood's most baffling films, you will appreciate this. In nineteen twenty six, they actually made The Johnstown Flood as a silent disaster movie, and like any great disaster flick, the plot is shaky, but the special effects for the time were spectacular. Can we just see this one little clip? This is exciting.
Whoa, Oh my goodness, I'm already love it. I'm gonna watch this entire special effectsh holy cow.
Yeah, this is a great mind blowing wow. So you can tell it's all done in miniature, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then and then watch how it's Watch how it's like superimposed or double exposed somehow some of the filmmaking.
Wow, this is fascinating. I just been blown away by the amount of.
Wow did how do they do that? That looks so real?
That looks unbelievable. I don't even understand it because people are flying away too, and they're the thing people. The special effects that were going on in these early days are truly outstanding. You know, these sci fi movies, like when you think about what they had and what they were that looked amazing.
Yeah, Paul, how did this get made? I mean, and I don't mean that ironically in the way that you do. I mean, how did they actually do?
And I Am going to get actually amazing podcast and do some research because I'm interested.
Paul Sheer, this has been a goddamn delight. What a blast, What a fun blast. I just I love deconstructing with you about anything.
What a gift this this is because every one of these it makes me feel smarter. I did not know about the Johnstone flood, and yes it was awful, but I feel good that these guys got some good fishing in and that you know, so that was a moral of it, right that.
They go there was some good fishing the of course. No, I really do love it, appreciate how your brain works, and I'm really grateful that you came on and share happy to be here. Thank you Ed for having me. What a blast, of course. Cheers by Snapoo is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapoo Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post
production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me Ed Elms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by The Collected Works. Legal
review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Leeberman, Nikki Etoor, Nathan Otowski and Alex Corral. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafoo, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook dot com. Thanks for listening and see you next week. S