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Johnstown flood 1889 dbq
Johnstown flood 1889 essay
Johnstown flood future impact essay
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The Johnstown Flood Stained the history of the United States. Over 2000 victims died and even more injured. The flood has been blamed on many people since it happened. One group individually brought about the flood. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club made selfish changes threatening the effectiveness toward holding back a water overflow. The renovation made to the dam brought about the destruction killing many people and causing millions of dollars in damages.
On May 31, 1889 4.8 billion gallons of water rushed down the Conemaugh Valley through Johnstown from the Conemaugh Reservoir. The flood killed over 2000 people and cause over 17 million dollars in in damage (today 17 million is equivalent to about 225 million dollars.) The South Fork Dam creating the reservoir created the problem; The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the dam between 1838 and 1853. The Pennsylvania railroads acquired shipping priority over canals; through this Pennsylvania sold the canal and reservoir to the Pennsylvania Rail Road. Not having a need for the reservoir the Pennsylvanian rail road sold the land to speculators who wanted to build a resort. The speculators included Henry Clay Frick, Benjamin Ruff, and Andrew Carnegie. These men built a very exclusive resort and named it The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. At one point the club became known as the most exclusive club in The United States. Included in the building of the resort Frick wanted the dam to be lowered to allow for a road to be built on top. Lower dams could not hold excess water just in case the reservoir flooded.
Dams made from dirt are very weak and the South Fork dam was built entirely with dirt. From an engineering standpoint dams made with dirt needed to be built ...
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...t legally have to pay any money to damages from the flood; it was seen as an act of God. Despite this many club members gave money to aid the relief including Andrew Carnegie who donated a new library. () The high number of members caused the case to have a hard time finding evidence for a member behaving negligently. After these court cases the United States Adopted the Ryland which held a non-negligent liable for the damage caused by lands being unnaturally used. The case at this point never became revisited but should have been to achieve some closer for the victims.
Hendrick, Burten. Life of Andrew Carnegie. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1932. Print.
McCullough, David. The Johnstown Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. Print.
Shappee, Nathan. The History Of Johnstown and the Great Flood of 1889. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg, 1940. Print.
Case study: the flooding that occurred in Minden Hills in the spring of 2013, flooded the downtown core. The picturesque cottage town has the Gull River flowing through it. The river overflowed in April because of many reasons: a couple of days of rain, the third largest amount in over a century, but it also happened because the frost in the ground stopped the water from going into the Earth, the lakes and rivers being full from the spring thaw, and the rapid
Behind Millerton Lake, lies an existing structure made up of concrete of 319 foot high, this dam is called the Friant Dam. In the San Joaquin Valley below the project's authority of Fresno, Madera, Kern, and Tulare; the water holds and deliver up to a million acres. In 1933 and throughout 1934, the state couldn't find enough contributors to buy revenues bonds to complete the project. Luckily, the River and Harbors Act of 1935 by the United States Congress came through and financed under the United State Army Corps of Engineers.
The “Dark Tide” by Stephen Puleo was the first book to tell the full story of “The Great Boston Molasses Flood.” The reason he wrote the nonfiction novel was to give the full accounting of what happened in the historical context. He used court records, newspaper accounts, and files from the fire department. He recrafted the tale about what actually happened with painstaking and terrifying details of those affected. Puleo creates a new way to view the dreadful catastrophe as something that changed Boston (“Dark Tide”).
While all of this was going on, the ideas for another major canal were just coming together. The Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal, was just beginning near the time the Erie’s construction finished up. The C&O canal would mostly be used to transport coal to Cumberland, Maryland. The building of the canal ended on June 11, 1850, at Cumberland. Although not the economic giant that the Erie was, the C&O canal reached it’s peak in 1870, during which tolls often topped $1,000(Drago 71).
The book A ,Misplaced Massacre, Ari Kelman’s writing describes the Sandy Creek Massacre astounding while still explaining how historians struggled to get its story to public and be told. This epic event in the history of America’s settlement occurred on . The sandy river Massacre was once seen a horrific event. The tittle has even been debated over the years.
Over the years Glen Canyon Dam has been the spark for hundreds of debates, rallies, and protests. These debates have been going on for almost forty years now. The fact is that the dam created a huge lake when it was built, this is what bothers environmentalists. This lake is called Lake Powell and thousands of people depend on its tourists for income. The lake also filled up a canyon called Glen Canyon, some people say it was the most beautiful place on earth. The anti-dam side of the debate has its basis in the fact that Lake Powell is currently covering Glen Canyon. It was very remote so few people got to witness its splendor. This is probably the reason the dam was built in the first place, ignorance.
The fallout of the 1927 flood demonstrates the one of many continuing struggle in dominating the Mississippi River despite understanding the true nature of the river. For example, “The average gauge readings through the last three months of 1926… of the three largest rivers… was the highest ever known… no one at the Weather Bureau or the Mississippi River Commission correlated or even compiled this information” (pg 175). The failure in understand the nature of the river prelude to more elaborate control schemes by expanding the federal government’s responsibility in seizing full control of the Mississippi River from states jurisdiction. The U.S Army Corps of Engineers is fully responsible in constructing va...
Shaw, Ronald E. Erie Water West; a History of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1966. Print.
The Cumberland and Cumberland River basin experienced a 36 hour rainfall that produced flooding in Nashville and its greater area (After Action Report, II). The 2010 two day storm was believed to be greater than a 100 year event. Storm activity began on May 1st and 2nd which created a large scale flash flood along the Cumberland and Lower Tennessee rivers, and within its tributaries. Historically the Cumberland River basin has received great amounts of precipitation and has experienced extreme rainfall before, making it prone to severe flooding (After Action Report, I). Some of the historic floods that have affected the Cumberland River are the December 1926, January 1927, January 1937 and March 1975 floods, which produced a maximum flood height in much of the river. Before the May 2010 flood, the Cumberland River reached a flood stage of 45.26 feet during the May 1987 flood which was a result of a series of flooding events that took place during an extensive amount of time (After Action Report, 4). The 2010 flood which affected much of Nashville acted more like a flash flood, which produced record breaking rainfall for much of the area. According to the Quantitative Precipitation Forecast (QPF) on April 30th rainfall totaled 7.8 inches across central Tennessee. The report also states that there was a widespread of rainfall equaling to 2 to 6 inch in total, over southeastern US stretching to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Rainfall for parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky totaled 3 to 4 inches with a high of 4.65 inches (After Action Report, III). As it is stated by the report areas around Nashville received more than 13 inches of rain in a span of 36 hours, which doubled the record set by the September 1979 flood event. At th...
The thirties was a time of anxiety -- after the major stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression was sparked. The economy is in the dumps, crime rate increased, mass migrations occurred, and much more. This despair inducing time caused a majority of the American people to be poor, or if they were rich before the incident, they would at least have a much less amount of money than they had before. Many people were looking for jobs, but the country did not have any jobs to offer them. Then soon enough, the president at the time, Herbert Hoover, issued the creation of the Hoover Dam, which had opened up a large amount of jobs for the people. Sure, the job was extremely dangerous -- hundreds died in the creation of the large dam -- but the people needed money. They would’ve done almost anything in the economic grave that they dug themselves in at this point. They originally hired mostly Chinese immigrants to build the dam, but soon enough, more people in need of money were up for the job. They also started using concrete for the Hoover Dam, which has stuck until today’s time, in which most buildings are made up of concrete. Concrete is so relied on today due to its toughness and durability. The Hoover Dam popularized the use of concrete in building.
Through the path of history, there have been several major events that influenced thousands of lives and were significant in forming the world today. One of the largest and deadliest events that occurred in history was a disaster not anybody could control or be held accountable for. This was Hurricane Katrina. On the early Monday morning of August 29th, 2005, a Category 5 rating Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States with winds up to 175 miles per hour and a storm surge of 20 feet high. Hurricane Katrina was one of the greatest and most destructive natural disasters recorded to make landfall in the United States. The natural causes of the hurricane, poorly structured levees, disaster inside the Superdome, and the
In a passage from his book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, author John M. Barry makes an attempt use different rhetorical techniques to transmit his purpose. While to most, the Mississippi River is only some brown water in the middle of the state of Mississippi, to author John M. Barry, the lower Mississippi is an extremely complex and turbulent river. John M. Barry builds his ethos, uses elevated diction, several forms of figurative language, and different styles of syntax and sentence structure to communicate his fascination with the Mississippi River to a possible audience of students, teachers, and scientists.
It was the deadliest and costliest natural disaster of all time in US history. What I
Jacobs, Jane. "12-13." The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. N. pag. Print.
Jim Jones planned the sequence of events in killing hundreds of people and unfortunately, his plan worked. Since many people died on that day, the Jonestown Massacre is considered a very important part of history, and also one that people, today, remember the tragic loss of their loved ones.