An engineer, backing up the road, and pulling at the nose of his locomotive a train of freight cars, had proceeded a third of a mile above Conemaugh. Here the roar of the coming flood broke upon his ears, and looking up the river he saw the descending avalanche. Instantly reversing his engine and drawing the throttle, his whistle all the while shrieking a wild alarm, he pushed at utmost speed the obstructing cars back to the yard of the Pennsylvania road. Then leaping from his engine, and leaving his whistle still to sound its warning, he ran to his house near by, and with his family escaped to the hill just as the rolling torrent dashed its billows at his feet.
Three passenger trains and one freight had been standing on the side-tracks some hours, detained by the wash-out already mentioned. The passengers were reading, writing, conversing, worrying, walking up and down the tracks in the rain, or watching the driftwood and the constantly rising river, but conscious of no danger. Something was said about a reservoir somewhere up the road, which might burst and come down upon them, but they gave the matter no second thought. Twice was one of the trains compelled to move, as the water undermined the track, and caused it to fall into the river. Once they were startled by the crash of a bridge, which yielded to
the rushing waters, and was swept away. It was near the hour of four in the afternoon, and they were still wearily waiting. Suddenly they were startled by the long, shrill shriek, close to their ears, of engineer Hess’ whistle, and looking out of their windows up the river, they saw an enormous mass of wreckage, roots, trees, and driftwood borne aloft on the back of the torrent, and rushing toward them. With one impulse, the most of the passengers leaped from the trains and fled for their lives. Those in the first train had to run round, or creep under the second in order to reach the town, and thence the hill. Between the trains and the town there was a ditch ten feet wide, and five and a half feet deep, and filled with water. Into this, many plunged--nine women and girls together. A gentleman who had leaped across tarried a moment to give a helping hand, and all were rescued, save one, an aged woman. She was apparently dazed; for, refusing the proffered hand, she said, “I will go this way,” walked toward the maddened waters, and was lost. The rest fled amain to the rising ground near by, with the raging torrent not ten feet behind them. Gaining the hill they turned to behold a grand and awful scene--the crashing, tumbling buildings lifted from their foundations and hurled against each other; the shrieks and cries and screams of agonizing, despairing, dying men and women, and all Conemaugh going down in the fierce river. The round-house sprang from its seat like a toy tossed from a giant’s hand, and more than thirty great locomotives were rolled along “like so many pebbles.” All the trains were carried away. In some of the cars the passengers could yet be seen, while on the top of one car, loosened from the rest, were two men struggling desperately to keep their hold as it rolled from side to side. The whole four trains drifted down about five hundred feet, when they were stopped in a singular manner. Some inexplicable movement of the water lifted the head of one train and threw it across that of the other. Engines from the round-house were rolled down and piled against these, a mass of trees and drift were added, and the whole four trains, with the exception of two or three cars, were arrested and anchored in the midst of the flood.