676 - The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club Part 2 - Reverse Dollop

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You're listening to the...

I know what it is.

You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is an American history podcast where each week I read a story from American history.

Stop it, buddy. Not this week because it's a part two

to the part one. Gareth Reynolds, who knows what the topic is going to be about.
You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. You know the deal here.

Uh, each week we I read a story from American history. Well, this week to my friend and my best friend, Dave Anthony.

Okay,

okay.

All right, let's just jump in. Um, well, it's the same date, it's May 30th, May 31st,

1889.

Year

of Indiana Jones's dad, probably.

Wow, Oh.

Wow.

That's intense. Yeah, and I thought about saying that for years.
Yeah. Yep.
Yep.

Okay, so do you remember where we left off, Dave? Do you remember what was happening? The damn problem.

The dam has gone. Yeah.
So the dam at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club just fucking...

The shit dam, anyway. Well,

excuse me.

The sluice is loose. Okay, so look.

It was absolute fucking bedlam.

The impact of the flood was so much worse because of all the things the flood was kind of picking up along the way.

Sometimes there was so much debris that the flood would actually stop

only to build up bigger because of the kind of debris bulge. So it was making dams as it went down.
It was kind of self-damning. Self-damning.

And then it would like projectile itself out, picking up steam, making the flood bigger.

And then that would just mean that the flood would go and then it would pick up more debris because it was moving faster. That's cool.

And you know, for the most part, it's going down the Kahnema riverbed. So it's kind of just like, you know, shredding all these places down the riverbed, but it's super over.

people. I don't know.
We'll see.

You could see the trees and the telegraph poles flying through it. Bridges, if it were to hit one, would hold it for about 10 minutes sometimes, but then eventually would give out.

And then the flood would have nice big chunks of bridge in it too.

Mineral Point was a small city with about 30 houses along a single street. It was parallel with the river and got absolutely hammered first.

By the time the flood had gone through, it didn't look like there was ever a city there at all. That's kind of weak.
Yeah. I mean, it's...
Make a stand. Are you talking to the property? Mm-hmm.

Okay, that's interesting. That's a take.

This is a podcast about property.

This episode or this show? Just in general, it's about property and property rights and

good property. I do feel like you kind of keep saying what this podcast, like this is...
It's a real estate podcast. Okay.

Anyway, the telegram that we discussed in episode

in episode one that was sent to Mineral Point. Let me just say, what was the name of the city that just got wiped out? Mineral Point.
Mineral Point. Right now,

right after this flood passes, there's a lot of good land up for grabs and sale.

And you can move in and you can get some really good deals. Right.
Okay. That just seems.

I don't. Okay.

So there was a telegram sent by Emma Ehrenfeld, if you remember, in episode one. She finally sent the telegram, but the operator in Mineral Point never got it.

I mean, he was forced to leave his tower. He said the first warning he received was seeing people floating by in their houses.
Which is a bad...

That's late. It's better than a telegram.

yep because it kind of lets you you go oh okay yeah then there's something bad this there might be a flood yeah uh you're keyed into it at that point um what time is it it's the middle of the night right no no it's it's like it's like early afternoon right now it's like uh maybe three two three something like that

um

so it was all gone uh 16 people died also

um Emma Ehrenfeld, who had sent the telegraph to Mineral Point and other places, also didn't survive the flood.

But she didn't. And how many lots are we talking about? Lots? Like housing lots.
I'm not going to get into the property stuff. I just.

It's just a property podcast. It really isn't.
And you just, I mean, we did a first episode and it wasn't a property. So it feels like you're just saying that

now. So

in the recounts, after Mineral Point was gone, one man explained a conversation between him and another resident.

So this guy says, quote, he says Mineral Point is all swept away and the people swept away and my whole family is gone, end quote. I says, quote, is that so? End quote.

And I says, do you know anything of my family? And he says, quote, no, I don't. I think they were all drowned.
End quote. So that's a.

So there was just a catch-up. It's a very brief conversation.

I think that's why it ended up in here. It seemed very

conversational. Like, did you see the game last night?

Yeah. See the game? Wow, it was down to a field goal in overtime.
That was close, huh? Oh, that's good.

All right. I guess we'll get a new wife.

See you later um so next was east kahnama where the rail yard was located there were uh nine locomotives that were stored there on that day and then there were additional 20 that were waiting on the tracks for the weather to pass so now we're talking about property

now we're if you if you want to get into it we are yeah this is this is rich guy stuff this is there you go so uh many of the stranded passengers had left the trains due to the delay but some of them just stayed on the trains to wait it out i would have 100 been a stay-on-train, wait it out kind of guy.

Engineer John Hess was pulling seven cars into town on the Bellest train when he was stopped by a flagman who told him.

Hess said, quote, I don't suppose we have laid there more than 20 minutes until we heard the flood coming. We didn't see it, but we heard the noise of it coming.

It was like a hurricane through wooded country.

Which is a lot of it is about how people heard it first.

People heard, is that regular? Sure. Okay.

The first thing he could see were trees on the move more than a flood. So they were all very confused when they would first see it because it did just look like a forest was attacking.
Sure.

And then the water, they would eventually see the water chaser. There was also a

something they like the first sign of water they saw was actually a mist. They called it, I think, the black mist.

So the first thing they saw was like a Tim Burton movie kind of coming at them, like a sleepy hollow cool. Yeah, very cool.
Very cool at first, but then you go, oh, what the, you know.

And then you, well, then you're talking to a guy and you're going, you know, hey,

do you know anything of my family? And he's going, oh, no, it's over.

Here's me telling the story. First, the mist came.

And then

I said, whoa,

and then your family was gone. Yeah.
I hears me. You be him.
Okay.

I hears me. No, you go, did you hear anything of my family? No, no, no.
Did you hear anything about my family? No, they'll be fine.

And then I go home. I go, man, I hope someone else tells him.

Okay, so, alright, so the first thing he sees are these trees on the move. The water at this point is coming in at 75 feet high.

That's very high. It's very high, and it really fluctuates throughout this.
So it's hard to fully know.

I think it was changing in heights, again, based on where it was sort of stopping, where it was like kind of hitting into a bridge and shit like like that. So there were,

it fluctuates in height.

For people in other countries, it's like 23 meters. Yeah.

And for people in England, it's noing twiggies.

Don't ever say that again. Okay.

So

Hess sees this coming. It's hot.
It's hot, right? I'm okay. You're hot? Yeah, but I might.
Lose the shirt. I might have.
Where's the shirt? I have a tropical disease of some sort. A loop bit you.

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

So, okay, so the trees are moving. He sees it coming.
And Hess sees this. And remember, he's on his train still.

And like an action hero, Hess turns to another engineer and said, quote, the leg's broke.

That's, he's right. He's right.
And Hess jumped into action and shouted that all the men and women around needed to run, but he stayed on the train. Why? Because you don't abandon your train.

Because Hess was on a mission.

A whistle mission. oh he's gonna whistle the a wishing he's so he's gonna wit he's gonna whistle

to warn people but is he gonna drive the train is he gonna take off while whistling

do we have a paul revere situation how about buddy and let's just also add that it wasn't really paul revere there was someone else on that hey hey hey stay hey no no no no i'm teaching i'm teaching i'm teaching stop stop stop stop Some context.

The train whistle was actually very important to an engineer. Engineers would play around with their tune, their tone, their tenor to make sure it sounded just right for them.

It was like a logo, but you know, a whistle. The whistle was part of the man, the job, the passion.
Why, gosh, it mattered as much as the train he conducted. Okay? So anyways...

Here comes Dave Anthony.

So anyways, Hess gets on the train and he gets the train steaming and moving. And not only was he holding his whistle down physically, but he eventually tied it down with rope.

And what Hess was doing was exactly what you said he was trying to Paul Revere even though he's a fake trying to warn as many people train moves slow the train moves slow I mean it's a jugger jugger jugger jug well he he doesn't have much time so it's not like he's you know I don't know how many people he saved necessarily but yes it's you know it's not like it's like he's not flooring a like a Tesla or something.

It's on fire. So what he was doing was trying to warn as many people as possible that could hear it.
He said, quote, I didn't know what else to do. I didn't see what else I could do, end quote.

And by net, it worked. The Hess whistle kept going as he got closer to Kahnema, where he lived, and people heard it and ran for higher elevation and somewhere safe.

How did they know just hearing the whistle that they had to run for higher ground? So they are so familiar with what a train whistle does.

So if a train whistle is doing like you hear like a chi cheer. Yeah, but if this one's going, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
Well, it's really going like,

and like there's a flood. Like they, like, they're, they're, there's a huge storm.
So people, like, freak out. So people.
So these people are fucking weirdos. These people are train weirdos.
Yeah.

I don't know what to tell you. Um,

and uh, and then so he takes the train all the way to where he lives. Yeah, at his house.
And literally, and he just jumps off it.

And he gets to his house just in the nick of time. He saved countless lives there in Kahnema and in Woodvale.
This is like the guy who saved all his people's lives in Alphadena a couple months ago.

Never heard of of him. What did he do? He's this random, he's just, he's this dude who graduated from like a

climate, some sort of climate, you know, degree. And he, and I've always followed him, and he just talks about going up in the park and Altadena and stuff.

And in the middle of the night, he put out on a Facebook group, he said, everybody get out.

And that was like two hours before the fire hit. He saved like

many lives.

It's like his Facebook's a train whistle. Right.
And he apparently on Facebook he he typed in.

That's why. Because people hear that and they know.
Yeah, and so it was just T-O-O-O-O-O-T on

train.

Okay. All right.
Okay. All right.

So full trains

and pretzel track were now in the floodwaters ahead. So the,

you know, the train station gets pretty much demolished. Some survive.
Some of the people on the trains obviously don't make it. Some do.
Now,

there's a pretty big lot there. So I think, you know, get in there.
Sears or a larger company. It's a good location.
This is a long time ago. And this is a while ago.
Maybe a movie theater.

This is a while ago.

I don't think they had that. Yeah, but it's a good piece of land.
Okay. Some of the trains were Pullman's, just so you know, just for a callback.

Okay, so now it's 4.07.

An hour. Yeah.

No, it's been a little longer. Okay.

And now. There's two towns in an hour.

No, more than a few. There's a few towns, but those are the main ones.
Okay. So

at 407, I mean, it's a river. So it's like it is going for a while going down.
It's kind of like, I think they call it.

A river. That's what it is.
Yeah. It's a river.
I can't remember what they call it. It's not horseshoeing, but something like that where like as it would get to the

sure it sloshes.

Okay, so at 407,

it was time for johnstown all right oh no wade that's bad it's all bad uh the flood hit in three different directions through the city about 40 miles per hour at this point how many people are living there in johnstown um there's quite a lot i mean thousands okay yeah um

so 40 miles per hour truly a wall of water consuming everything it got near

Cambria Iron from, remember Daniel Morrell, his company,

whatever.

There we go. So, Cambrie Iron, the Daniel Morrell company we talked about in the first one, the guy with the neck beard that people really enjoyed.
Yeah,

the visual. He's a great guy.

Cambria Iron had been fulfilling some orders for barbed wire at the time that it got totally leveled by the flood. I don't like this.
So the flood now had barbed wire in it, too. Oh, my God.

Which is good because you want barbed wire, you want trains, you want all that stuff in your flood, you want bridges.

So, like we said, so now there's barbed wire, trains, parts of the bridge and the flood. It's great.
It's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff.
It's like a Pier 1 imports.

Like if I'm downstream, I'm just going to probably not get in it.

I also would think about the people who could kind of dig in there for stuff they've wanted. Like if you want barbed wire, this could be great for you.
Or a train. Or a train.

I mean, if your guy was, I mean, most of us pine for trains, especially back then. It's all up for grabs.
Yeah, no, you could just be a melon real quick.

The waters were also picking up houses.

In Johnstown, the waters, so like they were like demolishing houses before, but in Johnstown, the waters hit a wooden house with a woman who was baking.

The house was ripped from its foundation and flipped on its side, and the oven for baking fell over. And then, so the house caught on fire.
So a firehouse is now being moved by the rush of water.

Did it? Uh-huh.

And now you've got a fire flood. So now you got a flood with fire.
Well, that's on her.

I agree. And that we've just, that's something we've just started to get into in America again when we're lighting fires on oceans and stuff.

But look, if you hear the rumble of a flood, you turn off the stove. I agree.
And that's how it worked back then.

Known staples of the city were gone or destroyed or burned. All of the above, roofs, trees, telegraph poles, pieces of bridge box, train cars, and like we said, that's sweet-ass barbed wire.

Also a ton of dead animals and people.

As the flood crossed through town, it hit a bridge at the end of the city and was kind of stopped it was sort of halted um at this point it was covering approximately 30 acres there were 1600 wood structures in it uh it was like a makeshift dam due to all the solid waste that had kind of accumulated which is good

um

well well good you know that it like i mean self-stopped kind of yeah stopping is good because none of this is

but you can get some night and get some fishing ins a little little recreation. Well,

but hold on because with all the debris, with all the debris,

there's people trapped in it.

They can't get out. No, they can't.
And the worst thing that could possibly happen happened, which is then that debris caught fire.

Jesus Christ. It's hard to know exactly what happened, how a massive dam of debris was now smoking on fire.

No, maybe it was, but what they think is that it was a derailed train tank car that was in the mix and some coals had spilled from the train car. Classic.

And then so, you know, like 80 more people died from there, from the fire. Now, I also think I'm not going to be able to do it.
Imagine being stuck in a flash. Oh, dude.

Honestly, I'm trying not to go too dark because,

you know, it's not funny. But

the accounts of

the accounts of what people were hearing are just horrific. I mean, they're just like, you know, and like people are trying to help people.

All right. So the total death toll was 2,209.
Now,

I think what also happened was like when it kind of stopped its momentum here, a lot of it like rushed back and like did another pass through Johnstown too. So Johnstown completely gets fucked.
Yeah.

Like it of all of them is the one that just completely gets fucked.

So look, David, obviously there there is a tremendous amount of darkness in this event.

Dave, we don't need the formal. I'm teaching you.
I'm your professor today.

And I'm pretty cool. It makes it a little stale.
Hey, I'm pretty cool, but I'm not going to be that cool. But how about this?

Maybe after class, we can go to the common and you and I can smoke a J-bone, play a little Frolf.

Don't tell your mama. Frulf? Mm-hmm.

What is Frulf?

Frisbee Golf? Okay, just read your story. Hey,

I want to talk to you about that. You're not cool.
You seem pretty down lately.

Talk to your teacher. Who's also cool? You, I'm down.
Hey, teach. You're not my teacher.
Hey, teach. You're a guy reading a fucking story.
Buddy, you didn't know any of this. I knew it.

Get back to the. I read over one and a half books.

Maybe. I'm really uncomfortable.

Hey. No.

Hey.

Maybe after class we can go do some milkshakes.

Try to.

You look so mad. What's going on at the home? Yeah, no, you know what I'm saying.
What's going on? We're going to go do milkshakes after you. What's wrong? Is your dad finished?

Is your dad doing something? He's dead. What'd he die from? He died in a fucking fire after a dam crashed through the town.
Damn.

Yeah, Dam is right. That's where the phrase came from.

That's tough, man. Yeah.
Maybe you come over to my house later tonight and we can watch

the never-ending story. Okay.
Why don't you just finish this and we'll get on with it? This is an ending story.

What we'll watch tonight will be a little

hey.

All right. Chill, man.

All right. Obviously, there's a tremendous amount of darkness in this event.

So,

rather than focus on all the deaths, because they're very dark, I'm going to tell you some amazing stories of survival and heroism.

Like when Victor Heiser

went to go check on his family's horses in the barn when the epic storm was going on.

And then the flood hits and it hit the barn and the barn was lifted up like a lot of the other places, was fully lifted up.

So his dad and he had just built like a trap door from the barn to like the roof.

So Victor quickly ran to the roof through the trapdoor in the barn and then he was up on the house. So while the house is moving down the flood waters, he's made his way to the top to the roof.

He's kind of barn surfing. Sure.

As he took off, he sees that one of his neighbor's houses is still actually standing. So he kind of walks to the edge of his roof and he Jackie Chan jumped off of the barn roof.

Is he at any time during this, is he yelling, yo!

I don't, they don't have that.

I don't think these people were celebrating it as much as maybe you. What about Cowabunga? That he did yell.
Yeah. Other people yelled that too.
Okay.

So he Jackie Chands off of that barn of his family's barn roof onto the neighbor's house and then he gets onto their roof and as soon as he gets onto their roof,

that caves in.

And so that caves in and he falls and he kind of is hanging on the edge on one of the eaves of the building.

But the water is rushing beneath him and he's trying to get his foot up, but he can't get a foothold.

And eventually he's so tired, his fingers gave in and he falls off the building onto a piece of debris. It's someone else's roof.

So he lands on this roof debris, and now he's rushing down the flood water

on the roof. So

he's roof boarding, they call it. And it became a huge thing in the X Games.
As he cruised down the flood,

he was passing other people from the neighborhood who are also debris kayaking. Hey, Larry.
Literally, he sees these people who run a fruit stand.

And he's like, hey, what's going on? You know, and they're like, I mean, he's not like that, but he's like, hey, he's he's looking

crazy. Did you go getting strawberries? Did you see the new strawberries coming?

And so

he holds on. He surfs down the water.
Trees are passing over him. Like he's ducking trees,

dodging them. And then a train car literally kind of just goes over him.

And now the roof splits apart. And he gets on a half of it.
And that half, because of what the train did, just kind of gave him momentum.

And he said, quote, that he shot out from beneath the freight car like a bullet from a gun. And now he's headed towards this brick building that's still in place.

And he jumped off of the wood ski to the roof where he was now with others who were surviving this ordeal.

None of them like him, but still, quote, I was able to hop to the roof and join a small group of people already stranded there, end quote.

And he checked his pocket watch right before the barn took off and right after he got to safety and the whole thing took 10 minutes

i mean it's all right he should have had his uh

video going on his phone like i would that would be a great tick tock this would be good for gopros but he didn't even have one yeah i guess you could be great to have like a head

yeah that would have been smart to have some sort of head out so it sounds like he blew it a little bit I they when you read back, a lot of people like this story.

So I don't think they thought he blew it. Yeah.
But it's good to get fresh eyes on stuff like that. I think you're kind of providing something that is helpful.

And maybe that'll be fun tonight when we go get some pizza stuff. Keep on with the story.

Teaching David.

Hey,

that'll be so whack, Jack.

Off.

Okay.

There was also a story of two men who were leaning out of opposite windows, like across from the flood, and of small white buildings, and they were using long sticks to try to rescue as many people as they could.

And as the floodwaters were gaining, one of them had a baby.

One of them had a baby. Huh? In the water, someone's got a baby? I don't think it was a baby they saved from the water.
I think there was a, it might have been. I mean, look, shit.

There were a lot of accounts of people pulling a lot of people out of this shit. So there, I mean, there is.

Well, anyway, so one of them has a baby and shouts to the other person across the way, and they said, quote, throw that baby over here, end quote.

And the other one shouted, quote, do you think you could catch her? End quote. And the other guy says, No.
Quote, we could try. Yeah, we'll give it a shot.

So the other guy tosses the baby 15 feet over the water into the arms of another guy, and that guy caught it and the baby survived. But the baby broke.
No, no, the baby survived.

Because when we throw a baby that far, I mean, they say don't throw a baby 20 feet because that's definitely going to break. But like a 15 foot, you got like a 75% chance of just snapping it.

Well, this is why when people see them, people throw their kids into pools and stuff like that. There's a lot of people like, hey, this is why you do it.
You train in the offseason for the event.

Yeah. So it's really about, you know, how you've got to know,

look, a baby will fly. They fly.
I mean, you know what I mean? It's like two footballs. Especially if you have someone who's good at baby throwing.

And that's why I think we should bring this back to the Olympics. Yeah.
In LA, which we're all excited about. Absolutely.
Yeah, that's going to be good.

Another guy just surfed the whole time on a mattress for four miles and survived. I mean, that's, yeah.
Yeah, I would do that. That'd be me.

There's got to be, that guy was definitely at the the end, like, I can't believe it floated that long without sinking, but okay.

Well, another family stayed in their house all night and just floated on their bed the whole night. I'm guessing

it probably had a wood base, but they just floated. Again, mixed in here are a lot of stories that are not anywhere like this.

Well, I want to just say, as far as the floating in the house story, their story sucks. Yeah, it's not great.
I think you'll like this one.

One guy named Leroy Temple was counted as dead, but was actually very much alive.

After the flood carried him away from his home, he hit the stone bridge, got out, climbed this embankment, and immediately walked to Massachusetts where he was from originally. So he literally went...

How far of a walk is that? I mean.

It's a distance. It's maybe under a thousand.
It's still fucking... It's crazy to go from bridge to Boston.
Hundreds of miles. Hundreds of miles.
But look, you get out and you're like, well,

nothing here. Yeah.
Or you're just like, well, fuck that. Like, that's what I would do after I climb.
You know what I mean? That's like what you feel like doing.

People in Johnstown thought it was a myth, thought his story was made up, because there were a lot of made-up stories. Thought his story was a myth.

But 10 years later, he returned and everyone's like, holy shit. There you are.
Yeah. He's like, cool.
I'm alive. I just went to Massachusetts for a while.
Yeah, I took a break. This place is a bummer.

Yeah.

It's also good to get out of the place you were born in. Well, he was born in Massachusetts.
Oh, never mind. So,

you know it's not i'd say it's just good to get out of the places that are flooding with places under 75 train flood yeah yeah

um okay so

the destruction was still unfathomable incomparable it uh was and remains to be the deadliest flood in the history of the united states okay so let me ask you this we'll get into this now who didn't pay go ahead who didn't pay who didn't pay for the crime uh well i don't know what do you mean i don't get into that this is you're not going to to talk about how

no one was held accountable? Come on.

You think that's what this is all about? Yeah. One out of every three bodies was unidentified.
What? Basically, one person out of every 10 that was around died, and Johnstown got it worse.

There was more like, you know,

nine out of every nine.

But America, you know us. We love fucking tragedy porn.
We do. So America couldn't stop reading about the flood as estimates were all over the map as how many people had passed away.

Some papers were estimating 10,000 and higher. I agree with that.
The Pittsburgh, I don't think that's right.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was so sought after that it had to shrink its page size so that it could print enough editions. I've done that.
It was called

the Great Calamity or the Nation's Greatest Calamity or the Historic Catastrophe. The papers kept printing the names of all the dead.

It was kind of one of those morbid press fascinations fueled by people unable to get enough. Right.

So not knowing where, and that also is like, we do that now,

but

back then. So that's the thing, like we are so into that now, like reading about the awful stuff.

But back then, I mean, this just had to be like as good as it had. It does itch that.

Yeah, people like it.

People like a disaster story. Yeah, and then, but what is this one is obviously a huge disaster, so you should be have some sort of interest or intrigue.

But it's like now we'll go like, a hiker got stabbed. Right.
We got to kick out every, you know. The thing's called a hickor.
Nice.

So not knowing where the interest

pieces should stop, the Philadelphia press had a story on June 5th about the Undertakers in the area. So this is where they're kind of finding the bottom.
They're busy. They're busy.
They're busy.

Well, that's what this story really is about.

Undertakers in the area read, quote, One of the most ghastly and nauseous sights to those unaccustomed to scenes of death is the launching arrangement for the undertakers.

These men are working so hard that they have no time for meals, and huge boilers of steaming coffee, loaves of bread, and dried beef and preserves are carried into the channel house and placed at the disposal of the workers.

And you don't want to get the beef and the people mixed up. Along comes one weary toiler, his sleeves rolled up and apron in in front of his perspiring profusely.

Despite the cold, damp weather, he was just finishing washing a clammy corpse, has dabbed it with cold water, manipulated it about on the boards, and in the interval before the body of another poor wretch is brought in, gets a cup of coffee and a sandwich.

With dripping hands, he eats his lunch with relish, setting his cup occasionally beside the hideous face of a decomposing corpse and totally oblivious to his horrible surroundings.

Does the sandwich have relish on it or is he relishing the sandwich?

I think, well,

he eats his lunch with relish. I think he's having a side of relish.
Now I want to point out that's a wild first question.

That's a wild follow-up. Let's get the the basic sandwich.
I don't think the first like they're talking about how with this guy, he's not washing his hands.

Right, but he's like, I think the important thing here is what's he eating? Like let's. No, They got into that, but the idea, I mean, you know what he's eating.

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So if I'm surrounded by bodies and I'm wipe, but I'm down, I'm doing this.

I'm probably famished after a while. I'm going to eat.
Sure. And

you just eat. You eat on your chop site.
It's no different than a guy who's on a construction site. You see him, the picture, and they're up on the steel beam and they're eating their sandwich.

Well, they're eating at work. It's different.
So you're just vastly different. So you're just eating.
It's vastly different. It's vastly different.

Are you saying that he should have like a break room?

I think that's better because I do think you're the odds go up that some guy is going to forget and just start eating a guy's hand and then start like you know performing whatever autopsy stuff he has to or post-mortem stuff he has to on a sandwich that he wipes his mouth and then he's then he wipes the corpse's mouth just not thinking well he's just eating brain yeah you know because he thinks it's the relish which is actually a good point about the relish this is how the the next part of the story which is the zombie outbreak no i'll handle again i'll handle don't talk about what's coming up or where you think this is going and let's not forget to get swim lessons.

It's

not a bad point at all. My camera's off.

Okay.

So

the funniest piece of journalism, well, also... It's interesting that you framed it that way.
I also took out the thing about a fake Paul Revere that they made up. Oh, yeah.

They made up their own fake Paul Revere, and he was this guy named, I can't remember what his name was. Dude's the horn.

He's the guy who came and he was telling everybody.

Let's go, there's a flood of floods. Yeah, so he existed in the papers for like three years or two years.
And it wasn't real. It was not real.

Okay, so the funniest bit of journalism, I think, was this Johnstown woman who was called a bride. She wasn't even called a woman.

They were like, a Johnstown bride, who is quoted as saying, quote, Today they took five little children out of the water who had been playing ring around the rosie.

Their hands were clasped in a clap, which even in death did not loosen. And their faces were still smiling.
So they're having a good time.

I just, they immediately, people were like, that's not, no, that wouldn't happen. They weren't frozen like

in demolition. Once the water hits, he seems up.
No, no. Once the water hits, you go like, they were probably freaked out.
If they existed. You be the water.
I'll be the kid.

Okay, water coming, coming, coming, coming, coming.

Okay, so the second it touches you. So it is a little terminatory.
Yeah, you grab it. You grab and then the smile goes up and you're.
I just don't believe the smile would hang.

I don't think I think that look they

1889 called bullshit

1889 called

a couple minutes and how long does it take to lose a smile three a lifetime

okay another hero

was miss Clara Barton who was brought in from the recently started American Red Cross. She was 67 years old and set up headquarters in a railroad car that was not being used.

She made herself a makeshift desk and she started sending out orders immediately.

She got construction underway for temporary houses for those who'd lost their homes and had surveys to see how many people in the area needed any attention.

She and the Red Cross did an amazing job and she was promised they would stay as long as there was work to do. Quote,

We are always the last to leave the field, end quote. And she meant it.
She stayed a full five months, never leaving once.

David, she's a reminder of what can be done when funding goes to organizations to help people in disasters. So she just, without permission, took over a rail car? No.
That's not...

You're framing her as a villain. That's what I heard.
This is a person who helped. Well, it sounds like she just went in and commandeered someone else's property.
No.

No. Okay.
She's helped. She set up a fucking office in a train.
I mean, that's what you're mad about? Everybody has. No.
Like. She's a hero.
I just think he got.

Nobody has poured water on her it just at some point you gotta ask like

there's that who's taking the breaks all right so uh excuse me uh who said you could be here you're coming to need to see some identification please this is not okay you work for the railroad the red cross the fuck is i never heard of that get out of here you fucking deadbeat Well, that's what I love now, too, like when you see, like, that's what I just don't fucking, we're so accustomed now to when there's a natural disaster, everything being like, will you donate to the American Red Cross?

It's like, we,

we should, we have the fucking money, like, get, put it, why don't you take some of that bomb money?

Yeah, why don't you take the bomb money and just go to, like, but instead, they're just like, these people, I mean, again, it's not, it's not a lack of sympathy for those who are in disasters.

It's just like, you fucking, you do it. You have all the shit.
Yeah. You took all of our money.
Yeah.

Um, okay.

But for all the people, like Clara, there were also also a bunch of idiots

who also, I should say Colonel Unger and John Park, or sorry, John Park and

Hess were also viewed as heroes. Hess, the whistle guy, John Park, the guy who went down and told them all.

Anyway, for all the people like Clara, there were also a bunch of idiots who showed up for the wrong reasons. These guys I love.

You're going to like this guy. These are the best guys.

Like the religious lunatic who went by the name Louis the Light, who wore nothing but long red underwear and handed out handbills with dumb shit written on them like, quote, death is man's last and only enemy.

Extinction of death in his only hope. Your soul, your breath ends by death.
We whoop, we're all in the soup. Who's all right? Lewis the Light.
I mean, is any of that wrong? No.

Is any of it right? Yeah. Okay.
Phil's. Louis the Light.
Yeah. I don't know.
He's...

Red, long underwear, walking around town. I mean, you're now mad at a guy who's basically like a flood Santa Claus.

First of all, you're the one who was getting mad at Clara for just taking a... She's a freeloader.
It doesn't sound like this guy's taking over any property. No, but he's...

Okay.

I mean, there's always a crazy guy. The crazy religious guys are always there.
Well, and also, I took this out for time, but there's a lot of

xenophobia, too. A lot of stuff about the hunkies, the Hungarians.
Every immigrant was called a hunky now, and anyone who wasn't just like a traditional American was called a hunky.

They were being blamed for a lot of shit. There's a lot of disgusting cartoons of like, you know, these kind of dingy dudes trying to take advantage.

There were a lot of people taking advantage of the situation. There were even people showing up at the Red Cross and getting free handouts and shit like that.

But a lot of it for a while was obviously blamed on immigrants because America's going to America. Let's remember this land was okay.

So donations did pour in from everywhere.

Trains with first aid supplies kept coming in. Tons of lumber, furniture, barrels of embalming fluid or pine tar.

Minneapolis sent a lot of flour. Walla Walla gave a carload of potatoes.

Cincinnati was generous enough to give 20,000 pounds of ham. Oh,

that's kept coming. Classic Cincinnati.
They still do that today. They do.
Cincinnati always makes it ham ring. Yeah.
They're like, who needs ham? Yeah. And you're like, not now.
We're good.

We need another disaster. We have too much ham.
Okay, we need, we're going to blow up. That was government building.

I mean, that's the thing is, when they start blowing shit up just to get the ham out, it's really not good.

Well, because when you give them, when you grant the ham budget, it's like they need to spend it to get it re-upped. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, but Dave, you were alluding to this before, jumping ahead. But what about South Fork? Well, Davey Boy, David, sweet Dan.

There were now more and more rumblings about the responsibility that they had in the event. You know what? Pointing fingers is dumb, but okay.
Okay.

Colonel Unger, remember him?

He's running the place now because

Ruff died.

So Colonel Unger and John Park were finally reached for comment, and they both spoke. Unger told the Pittsburgh Post that they did everything they could to prevent the disaster

and he kind of lamented the fact that the club was about $150,000 in the hole. But he didn't really do everything he could because, like, he didn't let them clean off the drain in time.
And

well, it wasn't even really a drain at this point. But yeah, yeah, you're right.
He didn't let him remove the fish, the fish gate thing.

Still,

you know what I mean? Yeah. Again, you're forgetting that it was a buck of fish.
Also, he's a colonel, so

he alone. They said that when he went back to his place after all this, he collapsed.
Like he had a dramatic collapse. And the victim.

John Park, again, still considered a hero, told the New York Sun, quote, No blame could be attached to anyone for this greatest of horrors. It was a calamity that could not be avoided.

Why is John Park considered a hero? Because he was the one who, when the dam was, he thought it was about to fail. He saw it kind of cresting.
He took his horse and got to town in 10 minutes

to tell them to send the telegram off.

He was shouting to everybody.

So

he told the Sun that the problem was, quote, storm after storm. And he said, quote, by 12 o'clock, everybody in the Kahnema region did know or should have known of their danger.
That's right.

End quote. That's right.
It's not right.

It's on the individual.

So America.

Well, I don't know.

One member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club named James McGregor said there was no problem with South Fark. South Fark? Fark.
South Fark. South Fork.

He said he thought the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. He even boasted the, quote, he even boasted, quote, I am going there to fish the latter part of this month.

As for the idea of the dam ever being condemned, it is nonsense.

We have been putting in from $20,000 to $15,000 a year at South Fork. We have all been shaking hands with ourselves for some years.

And being pretty clever businessmen, we should not be likely to drop that much money in a place that that we thought was unsafe.

No, sir, the dam is just as safe as it ever was, and any other reports are simply wild notions. And

okay, I mean, there's no proof of that ever being wrong. Well, it's also so much like today, where he does, you know, what we always do, which is just equate money with...
intelligence or capability.

Look, I'm successful, so I do think that I have money, so you can

let me fix everything. History is littered with rich idiots.
Yeah. And I mean, it really does bring you to now, like where you're just like, what the fuck?

And the amount of people are just like, he has so much money. How do you think he got it?

On the back of fucking everybody around him.

Of course, we're talking about Jesse the Body Ventura.

Lewis Clark, who was a club member, told the New York Herald that after talking to some engineers,

he wasn't even sure if the dam was the issue at all. Right.
Very Republican.

He's right.

It was parts around the dam. Well, he's saying it could have been another dam entirely.
Thank you.

James Reed, another member, echoed that and said, In the absence of any positive statement, I will continue to doubt, as do many others familiar with the place, that it really let go.

It might have been a different dam. Yep, double second dam.
Now we're doing the double dam theory. Well, have you heard, and this is a grassy dam.

Well, this is a pretty common thing that happens in this situation. But have you heard of a ghost dam?

Is that with Bill Cosby? Yeah, so the ghost dam will let go, and that will cause other dams to then. So

it's not

necessarily in the material world,

but often a ghost dam is at fault. Well, that's what it is pretty, it does show you how up their own asses they are to be like, we got to figure out which damn did this when they have no damn.

They have no damn left and they are just like, all right, it's definitely a dam. Yeah, who's a damn? We got to figure out which damn did it.
Who fucked up our dam?

So, as you would imagine, people are now getting pissed.

On June 3rd, reporters from Johnstown went to the dam and started reporting back and kind of ended a lot of the speculation that the dam had not done the damage.

How many days after was that? This is a few days. Okay.
This is pretty quick after. They then also began tracing the history of the dam back, which was bad news for the club.

Like we said, he took the sluices out. There's just bad.
There's swelling in the middle. There's the cresting issue.
There's the drop, the dip.

um that monday night a group of furious men from johnstown went to the south fork fishing and hunting club looking for any members who may have been hanging around hanging hanging well that'd be great uh when they couldn't find anybody they just broke into some of the cottages by smashing the windows and destroyed the furniture which is a letdown i mean it's like you come all that way you want to do something

make love and have a nice weekend i would definitely be banging yeah there's no doubt you just definitely whoever too i'm not no i mean i think it's this about role i just you know what i do i'd bang the bearskin rug okay I just toss it over a chair

with some of your other buddies. I'd take one of those sluices right there.
What? Yeah, got a bear hole fucking, you know what I mean? Right there in front of your friends.

You're just going like, we're gonna show these guys who's boss.

Oh man. This is 100% worse than the flood.
No, come on. I'm about to flood.
No. Oh, my damn.
My damn. None of that? No.
Okay.

You're looking out the window. I'm forlorn.
You're forlorn. Yeah.
You're forlorn.

So

it seems like they were genuinely going to go kill Colonel Unger, but he could not be found. They should have.
People were pissed.

A lawyer in Allegheny County, which is right there, said, quote, I predict there will be legal suits with possible criminal indictments as a result of this catastrophe. I predict there won't.

I am told that the South Fork Club has been repeatedly warned of the safety of its dam, and it comes from good authority, end quote.

But it wasn't helping. The optics were terrible.

All the members, as soon as the storm lifted, just left. None of them stuck around to help the people who'd been affected so greatly.

And once the specifics were getting out about Ruff and how he'd, quote, rebuilt the dam, people were furious.

Then H.W.

Brinkenhoff, a renowned engineer, and M. Wellington and F.B.
Burt,

and P.B. Acronym.
Come on. That one's fake.
But all the others are real. All from Engineering News

showed up.

And on June 5th, they had rendered their own verdict to the New York Sun with a headline that read, quote, cause of calamity, cause of the calamity, the Pittsburgh Fishing Club chiefly responsible, the waste gates closed when the club took possession, end quote.

So the club was on the hook in their opinion. Quote, there was no massive masonry nor any tremendous exhibition of engineering skill and designing the structure, putting it up.

There was no masonry at all, in fact, not any engineering worthy of the name. The dam was simply a gigantic heap of earth dumped across the course of a mountain stream between two low hills.

End quote. That works.
It does not. It does.
It doesn't. Oh, okay.
What are you, a beaver now? No, that would be way more helpful.

But more and more people are coming out talking about how terrible the dam was,

how even when it got rebuilt, they were scared. Well, people were talking about it.
People were like, for a long time, were like, that's not good.

Like, people would even go, like, even you, like Daniel Morell in the first episode, he's going like, hey, what the fuck? Like, there's, so there's definitely people down there.

But it is one of those things where it's like,

it is like the wildfires. It's like you...

are very accustomed to like they were accustomed to flooding because there was a lot of rain and stuff or you know however it was happening but the full-on tragedy you don't you can't even if you know it's coming like you're like well what the fuck am i gonna do they're not gonna do shit right so you're just sitting down there waiting uh finally a jury of coroners said quote from the testimony and what we saw on the ground that was there was it was not sufficient water, nor was the dam constructed sufficiently strong, nor of the proper material to stand the overflow.

And hence, we find the owners of the dam were culpable and not making it as secure as it should have been, especially in view of the fact that a population of many thousands were in the valley below.

And we hold that the owners are responsible for the fearful loss of life and property resulting from a breaking of the dam. End quote.
Over. So now the story goes viral.

All the websites are snagging it, picking it up. It's on Perez, it's on Drudge, it's Breitbarted,

CNN,

Daily Wire. All the great ones.
All the Goats. Yeah.
Slate. Slate, which is still awesome.

The headlines like, quote, the club is guilty. Quote, neglect caused the break.
Quote, shall the officers of the fishing club answer to the terrible results?

A week later, the New York Times had a headline that read, quote, an engineering crime, the dam of inferior construction according to the experts.

No. What's an expert?

Well, an engineer. Someone who was

like, it's debatable. No, no, no.
No, it's 100% not.

It truly. Is it okay to

ask questions about it? Can I be the teach? And then you're dating. Well, I like...
If you want to ask questions.

Okay, shut me down. I'm just saying it's okay to like, not everybody knows everything.
And it's okay to be like, maybe the engineers weren't right here. It's okay to ask questions.
Look, it is.

I'm with you. Yeah.
Yeah. I just think it's when those people are in power.

You know what I mean? You can't doge a damn. Well, it sounds like maybe the engineers

who's paying them, you know, where are they getting their engineering materials.

So are you, are you, you're doing the thing where you're just sort of saying like empty thoughts just to kind of just ask some questions. Okay.

But it's a bad question. This is free speech.
Okay.

So.

Science is about asking questions. And it's not science.

It truly appeared that no actual engineers, this will help, were brought in to take a look at what they were doing.

The dam also never appeared to have actually been inspected by anyone, quote, who, by any stretch of charity, could be regarded as an expert. Why would you inspect it if it's working well?

It's holding the water, it's working well, so you don't need an inspection. Until now, it was just rich men doing whatever they wanted as quickly and as cheaply as they wanted, and they didn't care.

But maybe it wasn't even beyond what happened at the club. A great paragraph, again, most of this is from the book, The Johnstown Flood, by David McCullough.
This is a great passage from the book.

Quote, for despite the progress being made everywhere, despite the growing prosperity and the prospect of even more of an abundant future, there were strong feelings that perhaps not always right with the Republic.

And if the poor Hungarians of Johnstown were signs of a time to come when a, quote, hunky could get a job quicker than a, quote, real American, then the gentlemen of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club were signs of something else that was perhaps even worse.

Was it not the likes of them?

Was it not for the likes of them that were bringing in the hunkies, buying legislatures, cutting wages, and getting a great deal richer than was right or good for any mortal man in a free democratic country?

People were beginning to think a little more about just what it was they might be losing and to whom. And the more they thought about it, and especially the working men, the less they liked it.

Blah blah blah.

You know what I mean? Like, whatever. I mean, it sounds like

these guys don't want jobs. Is that what I'm hearing? No, they want jobs.
Well, they're just, you know, it's the same shit. Yeah, it's never stopped.
It's never stopped.

Yeah, that's what the country is. That's what this podcast is about.
It never has stopped. No, I don't think so.
Yeah, because it's not a, whatever you called it at the beginning, a property podcast.

It's a property podcast nope um but it is it's just like

i don't know this when i first heard about this i was like oh fuck's sake it just

they just don't okay well anyway they don't care they don't care i mean you are you you're not going to be held accountable i know but even then most of us don't you think like most of us would be like

the right thing to do factors into your thinking

Well, yeah, but they're not that. But they get there because they don't have that part of their brain.
Well, that and the richer, there's tons of studies.

The richer you get, the less empathy you have. Go, you put your hand there.
Thank you.

Among all the failings of the dam, it was becoming clear that if they had just removed the fucking fish guards, it would have made a huge difference.

And maybe it wouldn't have stopped it, but it would have helped prevent it a little bit. So you just pull on the fish sentries.
You're like, hey, you guys, drop your guns. You don't need to be there.

We don't need fish guards right now. No, no.

They were the, like the greats that were on.

any name you want for them, but yeah guards. Okay, yeah, they weren't there's and we're not talking like a fish army, well, it's actually the navy, it's the fish guard that we're talking about.

Okay, so they're keeping an eye on things, okay, okay.

Um, quote, to preserve game for some Pittsburgh swells, the lives of 15,000 were sacrificed. Again, the numbers.
That's a lot.

That's not what I was lost.

So feeling the heat, the club members started to pony up a little bit of money. Oh.

Yeah. They started to try to buy their way out of it.

Henry Clay Frick gave $5,000, which would be around $170,000 a day. Jesus.
The Mellon family, who was involved, I didn't even get into them, but the Mellon family gave $1,000.

Andrew Carnegie gave $10,000. You think that's nothing? One asshole gave $15,

which would be $500 in today's money. It cost $800 to join.
Who the fuck? $800 to join. He gave $500.

In today's money. He gave $15.

That's like a dude at the strip club like throwing pennies on stuff.

Hank, Hank, can we talk to you over here, Hanky?

Okay, so when litigation was finally brought, though, it pretty much stalled out.

They couldn't bring any criminal cases for a couple of reasons. One, because Ruff, who had made a lot of those decisions, was dead.
And they didn't think that the club as an entity could be at fault.

It was made up of a bunch of members, but the club itself was, again,

there's obviously going to be some lawyering around the edges because these are very rich people.

You sue the club and then everyone who's part of the club. But it's like Enron.
Like, you can't blame Enron. Yeah, I can.

Enron didn't do anything. Enron's a class organization.
No, so, but Enron. There was a couple of oopsie

who ran the club.

There were a couple of,

if you're listening, there were a couple of oopsie coopsies in the club. But the club was healthy.

Plus,

there were a lot of points being made that

this flood was so unique that they couldn't have prepared for it. They had not seen anything like it.
You know why it was unique? Because they did a dam without any engineers.

Well, the flood, the amount of rain was, like I said, we don't know exactly how much it was because the guy who was supposed to like

in a worst case scenario, which is what you make a dam for. Yes.
It's like the levees in New Orleans. It's like you go, you go, yeah, well, okay, what if

the worst thing happens? What are you going to do?

Again,

these are very rich guys influencing this area. So the American Society of Civil Engineers dragged their feet in investigating because of who they were investigating.

And when the findings finally came out, it favored the club. They basically said that you can't prove it was negligence, and the flood was so bad, even with the drain pipe issue,

even with drain pipes, it still might have failed, you know.

Plus,

what year is this again? This is 1889.

So it is true. Also, like, when this is going on, like, Carnegie is

in Paris, then he goes to Scotland to golf. Yeah.

And, like, all these people are dead, and their lives are completely ruined, their businesses, all that stuff. And they, one guy offered $15.

They don't give a shit. They have, they are our worst.
Yeah.

Okay, so

these are the richest men of the era. So, you know, they were rich, and the rich people always win.
So, who gives a shit?

The only way to do it was with individual lawsuits instead of one big criminal one. So, individual lawsuits were brought.
But when a suit was brought, they would move it around a lot

to kind of delay it. And then, when it was finally going,

it would be in the area. And still, so much much of the area was still a steel town.
Like

Cambria Steel, like still stayed open after this. They need money and jobs more than ever.
So you'd get a couple of those guys on a jury and whatever. So nothing happened.

Arguably, the saddest lawsuit of the lot was brought from the club.

to the club from a guy named Jacob Strayer, who was a lumber dealer.

He sued the club for $80,000 in lost goods. And they did the thing, the case was kind of bouncing around from court to court.

Like I said, the club was always changing the venue.

Then, five years into the lawsuit, Strayer figured out that his lawyer, without his knowledge, had actually already settled the case out of court for $500

and died shortly thereafter. And Strayer went bankrupt, and that was the end of it.
Well,

I mean, that's

awful. It's illegal.
It's a story of a lawyer. Yeah, but that's illegal.
You can't. You got it.
Well, that's why he died right after.

I'm fucking. Yeah, he was going to die.
I got to get out of here. He spent $500 and then he took off.

So, in other words, the club just completely, fully

with no accountability, got away.

That's what happens to rich people in this country. That's why we are where we are, because for years and years, there's no laws for the rich.

No, because they influence, I mean they, again, it comes down to the thing we always talk about, which is just you can't, you can't have this system where money is literally everything.

If money is literally everything, then people are going to do everything to get it.

And the sick people will get all of it, and they'll do anything to get it, and they'll treat the regular people like shit to get it.

And so they just ruin everything. And it's just like, on this scale now,

I mean, and this was a poor town. This was not like, this was like a small working class poor town,

and they were doing all right, and then everything got fucking taken away from them.

The difference from then till now is that, you know, they actually, there was work, like there was an outpour, there were, there was like help coming, they were, the government was assisting, there was stuff going on.

Now, I mean, what is it? It's West Virginia, right? Where it's just like, they still have not, like, Trump has not addressed the floods there, and you know, that's just kind of how it goes.

All right, so in August 1889, the North American Review had an article called The Lesson of Kahnema.

In it, Major John Wesley Powell, when writing about the dam, said it had not, quote, properly related to the natural conditions, end quote.

And at the end of the article, he stated, quote, modern industries are handling the forces of nature on a stupendous scale. Woe to the people who trust these powers to the hands of fools.
End quote.

That's the story of this fork fishing and hunting club and how they killed thousands of people. So it's a happy, good,

good ending. It's a good story.
It's a good story. It's a fun story.
It's cool. It's just,

it's cool. It's what's up.
It's good. It's good.
It's good.

This, like I said, the Johnstown Flood by David McCullough. I was there on the history channel

on YouTube, flood destruction, flood, fire destruction, the great Johnstown Flood, and some stuff from npshistory.com.

And that's it.

That's that goddamn nightmare. So.

Yay. You want to go out with your teach for maybe some pizza? Yeah, we'll get some pizza and maybe do some loose pipes, put them on a bear rug.
Do the leapfrog thing you were talking about. Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. Do all that stuff.

Will it ever change, Dave? Nope. Do you think the worst it's getting now, we might be getting close to some breaking? I mean, it could totally go.
Will the dam break, so to speak?

Oh, yeah, the dam's going to break in some way, but

they just have so much. They do.
They have a lot. And now they're going to have robot dogs with flamethrower robots that are not going to be capable.

I mean, that's the good news. We will be living in

the stupid version of. Well, yeah, the first time they set out robots to keep control of everybody, it's just going to be a like.

You saw that robot beating the shit out of like someone in China, right? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.

Um, all right, well, there you go. That's uh, that's that.
So, shout out to the rich people.

Um,

yeah,

thank you.

No, thank you. Thank you.
Thank me.

Hey, dollop fans. I know you love the dollop.
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