But then I was catapulted up to the surface beside a large piece of wreckage. I reached out and grabbed a sodden canvas awning dangling off a piece of house siding. I tried to pull myself up but could not. All my strength seemed to have drained from my arms and hands. There was no way I could hang on for long.
The words Dean Fleming had muttered came back to me: “God is our refuge and strength . . .”
“Lord, if You have anything for me to do in this life, please save me,” I pleaded.
For years afterward I would have the same dream: I was hanging, dangling, gripping that canvas with my fingernails, spitting out putrid water, flinging heavenward my stumbling prayer, knowing that soon my grip would loosen and I would sink down, down . . .
I felt something brush by. A large tree, torn out by the roots, nuzzled me. With a sudden infusion of strength I pulled myself into the branches and then onto the large tree trunk. Wonderful, protective trees! How I have always loved you!
As I lay there on my stomach, I was able to stare out at scenes all around me—an immense steel girder poking up through the muck; a woman’s body clutching a baby and turning over and over in the water; one of the store dummies, floating by serenely, hardly distinguishable from other bodies; an entire family—father, mother, and two little children—kneeling on the siding of a house. As the current quickened, speeding by me went one dead cow, the bodies of two riding horses, the back of a hay wagon, and a school of rats swimming smoothly behind a staircase that could have come from our office building.
One hefty woman covered with tar was riding astride a barrel which kept rolling from side to side while she screamed in terror. A man rode past me, standing on a large garage door. It was Salvatore Mazzini, the Italian shoe repair man, all alone and totally naked; he raised one hand toward Heaven in supplication. Aware that I was shivering, I looked down and made a shocking discovery—all my clothing had been torn off. I too was stripped bare. “Please, let this be a bad dream,” I heard myself saying.
But it was not a bad dream. I was astride a large tree, bruised, naked, terrified, as the flood debris verged into one body of water moving along the riverbed. My tree had slowed down so that instead of holding on to the branches with all my strength, I could sit up a bit and look forward. What I saw was not reassuring. Dead ahead, about 300 yards, was Railroad Bridge, that stone relic from the past century. People had called it ugly, too small for modern traffic, and a transit hazard for all except the smallest boats. It was built to last centuries.
One anguished look now told me why. Much of the flood had rushed over, under, or by either side of the bridge, which had resisted an immense tonnage of water power. It had remained firm when assailed by logs, trees and pieces of housing. Trucks, railroad cars, and whole houses had not budged it. When a locomotive smashed against two stone pilings, bystanders later reported that the bridge trembled, but held.
All these big objects blocked up the passageways underneath the bridge, creating a pileup that had quickly reached the top of the bridge and was backed up hundreds of yards in an area as wide and long as three city blocks. Then came the most terrifying sight of all.
Fire suddenly shot out of a small house that had crunched up against the far-left section of the bridge. As I watched, the flames leapt high, obviously fed by oil or gasoline. With a brisk breeze now blowing, the entire mass backed up behind the bridge could soon turn into a fiery torch.
What escape was there? The water had slowed down enough that for a desperate moment I considered swimming for the bank. But it was too far off and the water was churning with debris.
Could I steer the tree away from the fire? Several kicks in the water quickly showed me the futility of that approach.
Despairingly I looked behind me for help. Dirt-colored water extended as far back as I could see, floating the wildest collection of objects, living and dead, swimming and drifting, all heading for Railroad Bridge. And all set to pile up on top of me, I thought with horror. I wanted to scream, shout, cry, but to whom? Everyone around me was either dead, seriously hurt or struggling to survive. At least I was astride something unsinkable.
There was nothing I could do, except . . . Then I remembered feeling this same terror once before—during that wild ride down Seven Mile Mountain in Bryan’s car.
I prayed again, “Lord, are You there?” It was a pathetic plea, a bare whisper, as though I were ashamed to call attention to myself in my nakedness. How ridiculous! I’m about to die and yet still concerned about how I look. Have I always been this vain? Then I laughed. The whole thing was ludicrous. I was stripped down to nothing. I came into the world with nothing on; I was going out the same way. Why was I ashamed of being the way the Lord made me?
The thought freed me. I straightened up, realizing that in my hunched-over state, I had assumed an almost fetal position. I was certainly not ashamed of my body—in fact, I had admired it in the privacy of my room. I looked around me again. Then I stood up to see better.
The sun had gone. The sky was overcast and drops of rain pelted down. I liked the feeling of the rain on my body. I looked up and let it wet my face. Tears came, I don’t know why. They poured from my eyes and mixed on my face with the rain.
A new, tingling sensation flooded me. It seemed to start in my feet and work upward. How to describe something I had never felt before? Exhilaration. Joy. Elation. Warmth. A combination of all. But something more, too. Caring. No, stronger than that. Love. That was it!
I was being suffused with love. Washed in it. It penetrated every cell in my body. I was being totally, completely loved. By whom? By Someone I did not know, but wanted to know very much.
I stood as straight as I could and reached for the invisible sun.
Nineteen minutes had passed from the time the dam was breached until the wall of floodwater smashed into the outskirts of Alderton. North Bridge took the full impact. Three cars were crossing the bridge at the time; the cars pinwheeled and somersaulted into the air like toys, then were swallowed up. The asphalt surface on the bridge simply disappeared, leaving the bridge skeleton tilting at a grotesque angle.
The wave of water then seemed to separate. One mass roared southwest into downtown Alderton. The other veered to the east side of the Sequanoto River and bore down on the Lowlands.
The first building hit in Alderton was the one-story brick dwelling and office of dentist Harry Froehling. It was smothered by the 30-foot-high mass of watery debris. Only the foundation was left. Harry had dashed to safety only minutes before.
Next struck was a vacant two-story wooden structure that had once been used as a stable. It exploded in a shower of kindling.
Jordan’s Hardware was obliterated before the mass bored into the three-story Sentinel building. Observers seemed to agree that this structure put up a fight. The dark, broiling wall broke around the building, causing it to shudder violently. As the follow-up waters continued to cascade into it, the Sentinel building began to totter and tilt. The roof split with a shriek, a part of it torn away. People were seen spurting out of the top, spinning, whirling, scrambling, clutching at anything for support.
Then, slowly, the whole building broke apart, floor by floor, and was swept away. Dean Fleming held on to Emily Cruley as they were propelled through an opening in the roof. He managed to get Emily up on a piece of roofing before a tumbling beam knocked him unconscious and he was sucked down into the torrent. Emily was later pulled from the waters, still alive and still clutching her black leather subscription case to her bosom.
Rand was catapulted into the turgid waters and, being a good swimmer, tried to keep himself afloat. Bruised and buffeted, he grabbed a heavy beam as it sped by and hung on to it grimly until his legs were smashed by the pileup at Railroad Bridge. It took rescuers several hours to pry him loose from the debris; by then he was near death from loss of blood.
Of the seven others who scrambled to the top floor of the Sentinel building with us, only one survived—a woman who was rescued fr
om the mess at Railroad Bridge.
After conquering the Sentinel building, the floodwaters roared into the heart of Alderton, looking for bigger challenges. Salvatore Mazzini’s shoe repair shop was no obstacle. It was swept up like a piece of flotsam as the old man leapt onto a garage door that was spinning by. Mazzini’s body was recovered later, burned almost beyond recognition by the fire.
Onlookers thought that surely the six-story Haslam House, a solid brick structure, would withstand the roiling waters. At first it seemed to. As the first wave crashed into the brick building, it trembled, but held. It resisted the following assaults too, until a tumbling locomotive gashed a deep hole on the west side of the building, at about the second-floor level. The wound was serious. Waters rushed into it, causing the hole to widen.
Screams poured out from the guests as the top floors began to settle. The relentless, flowing mass of debris bubbled into the hotel like poison, smashing doors, splitting seams, breaking furniture. The ballroom, scene of our graduation dance, contained the instruments and music stands of a band that had been practicing only moments before. Warned of the approaching waters, members of the band had scrambled to the top floors of the hotel. Soon their left-behind trombones, saxophones, trumpets, and a bass drum were sucked into the mass of flood debris. When the third and fourth floors of the west side of the hotel collapsed, the whole building shuddered, bobbled, groaned and then broke apart.
Eighty-eight people were in Haslam House when the floodwaters arrived, including Vincent Piley, Tom McKeever Jr., and two executives of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who were meeting in Tom’s sixth-floor suite. When the hotel was swept away, only twenty-four survived. One of the survivors was young Tom McKeever. The others in his suite drowned.
The flood was almost capricious in what it devoured and what it spared in Alderton. All buildings on the eastern end of Main Street for a depth of four blocks were destroyed. Stores on the western end were damaged, but not seriously—not even as badly as in the April mini-flood. Gillin Auto Supply and Gaither’s Clothing Store were two that were spared.
Separated by North Bridge into two masses, the floodwaters pouring into downtown Alderton divided once again, one section wiping out that four-block section east of Main Street and continuing to Railroad Bridge; the other veering west and destroying a dozen residences. The unpredictable floodwaters demolished Baker Memorial Church but left almost intact the church education building, scene of Spencer Meloy’s dismissal, and came within a block of Bank Place before dissipating.
The mass of water and debris that veered east of North Bridge created more havoc than her twin sister. First to receive the onslaught was the Trentler Wireworks warehouse. Waters thundered into this tin structure, ripping it apart as if it were a cracker box. Pieces of tin siding were soon whirling and twisting in the vortex. Far worse, hundreds of bales of wire were spewed up and out of the building, glinting in the waters like an explosion of fine, silvery hairs. Thousands of feet of wire soon entangled everything in the debris-filled waters, creating a new horror for those swimmers who were still struggling for their lives. A dozen deaths were later attributed to the strangling effects of these silvery tentacles, which wrapped around trees, railroad cars, automobiles, houses, animals—and human beings.
The flood mass licked at the edges of Yoder Steel and then barreled into the railroad yards south of the steel plant. One roundhouse seemed to melt under the onslaught; the other was badly damaged. A dozen engines were lifted up and tossed aside like wood chips on an ocean wave. Several went cartwheeling with the main body of debris that later hurled itself against Railroad Bridge. A tank car of gasoline rose ten feet off the ground, spun, crashed into an engine and split in two, spraying gasoline over everything within a 100-foot radius.
Twenty-five freight cars and eighteen passenger cars either broke apart or simply floated away. Five engine tenders were later discovered half-buried in the sand. One boxcar tore through a small Roman Catholic church nearby, scattering pews, statues, and religious artifacts. Some were later recovered miles from the site. The waters tore up the railroad yards, with hundreds of broken tracks cascading throughout the area, ripping through houses, impaling people and animals.
Spencer Meloy received a frantic call at 2:15 that the dam had broken. “You’ve got fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, before the water hits Alderton,” he was told. “Clear out those in the Lowlands.”
That Spencer was at home when the call came probably saved three hundred lives. Margo and four wives of steelworkers were meeting with him. The six of them ran from the house through the streets, screaming warnings. Hardly anyone even bothered to open doors or look out their windows. Next they banged on front doors, shouting, cajoling, begging people to run for their lives. A few caught on and began to pile belongings onto carts, bicycles, even toy wagons.
“You haven’t time to save anything but yourselves!” Spencer would shout.
Margo began to grab babies and children, pulling, prodding, and pushing them toward the sloping wooded area a few hundred yards away.
Gradually a slumbering, heavy-spirited community came to life. Night-shift workers appeared, roused from sleep. The trickle of people moving toward the eastern ridge grew into a throng. But many kept returning to their homes to pick up more belongings.
As the flow of people to the area of safety and back seemed almost equal, Spencer grew frantic. He looked at his watch. “We have only minutes!” he screamed. “Everyone to higher ground!”
Then he saw Margo running back into the housing area. “No more time, Margo,” he shouted.
“There’s another baby,” she sobbed, and kept running.
“Too late. Come back,” Spencer yelled.
Margo shook her head and kept going. Spencer started to run after her, then stopped. He had to keep people moving to safety.
A minute later, the first rumble was heard from the north. “Here it comes!” someone shouted.
All listlessness disappeared. Panic took over. People began swarming from the houses now, stumbling, scrambling toward higher ground, dropping heavy household items as they ran.
Then they saw it—a brown wave 30 feet high or more, devouring everything in its path. It was a hundred yards away when Spencer saw Margo dash out of one of the houses with a baby in her arms. A sob in his throat, he began to run toward her.
“Pastor, don’t!” someone shouted.
Spencer was moving against such a frenzied tide of people that he soon realized the futility of his effort and stopped.
The wall of dirty brown debris ripped into the Lowlands exactly 15 minutes after the warning. Some Yoder houses were lifted off their foundations like tea leaves and swept intact toward Railroad Bridge; others dissolved into hundreds of pieces. One row of six houses was upended to a vertical position for an agonizing moment. A bed with a man in it shot out one end. Two other bodies spilled out of windows. Then the houses collapsed inside each other like a deflated accordion.
Margo was not the only person running for her life. A bearded steelworker was sprinting beside her, holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a small radio in the other. Three heavyset women were 20 feet ahead of them, but losing ground fast. All were running east while the floodwaters bore down on them from the north.
The baby Margo was carrying was small, but heavy enough to slow her down. As the steelworker ran by her, she shouted something at him. He paused, turned, dropped the whiskey bottle and grabbed the baby from Margo, barely shifting his stride.
Six people in a race against death. The steelworker picked up speed and with the baby, clambered up the bank to safety. Margo passed the three women who, seconds later, were swept off by the water to their death.
As Margo clawed her way up the bank, the lip of the flood caught her, spun her backward. “Spencer,” she wailed, her eyes imploring.
Meloy lunged toward her, his eyeglasses flying off as he tried to dive into the water. Two men grabbed him and pinned him to the ground. Margo’
s body was sucked into the swirling waters and she was gone. Death had claimed four of the six.
The wall of muck surged through the Lowlands, leveling nearly every house; over one hundred people there were drowned. Some five hundred reached the safety of the eastern slope, thanks to the heroic efforts of Spencer, Margo, and the four housewives.
Next the waters slammed into the Stemwinder. The two-story building shook violently, groaned, then split apart with a loud explosion. A mass of broken liquor bottles, kitchen utensils, silverware, tables and chairs, plus another six bodies, joined the turgid, debris-jammed water as it streamed south.
Sam Palmer’s body was found the next day a mile from the Stemwinder. James, the watchman, had been in his home in the Lowlands when the flood struck. His body was never found.
After destroying most of the Lowlands and the Stemwinder, this section of the flood surged back into the Sequanoto riverbed, joining the torrents that had coursed through Alderton. This mass now aimed its fury at Railroad Bridge, which so far had resisted every punch thrown at it.
Dazed rescuers on and about Railroad Bridge were involved in a frantic attempt to pull out survivors trapped in the mass of junk piling up on the north side of the bridge. When the fire broke out, the screams of burning victims seared forever the minds of those who watched.
Part of the water sideswiped Railroad Bridge to the east and went roaring down the Sequanoto riverbed. A man driving north on Route 143, which paralleled the river, described the water coming toward him as “a brown mist, about ten feet high.” He stopped his car and scrambled up the bank on his right. The last he saw of his car, it was tumbling end over end down the road he had just traveled.
The floodwater coursed 10 miles down the Sequanoto riverbed before dissipating into dozens of small streams and rivulets. Debris was scattered over a 100-square-mile area south of Alderton.
Tim and Troy Gillin started out from Troy’s house at 1:30 p.m., telling Mrs. Gillin they planned to hike across Railroad Bridge, then continue either east through the forest paths that led to Somerset Valley or south alongside the Sequanoto River.
Julie Page 37
