Pod Insights SNAFU with Ed Helms Paul Scheer and the Johnstown Flood About this episode Paul Scheer is an OG podcaster about movies. Ed tells him the story of the snooty country club project that ends up inciting the Johnstown Flood -- and becomes fodder for an epic silent film on its own.
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Transcript 10,109 words · 16 speakers
0:01 Speaker 00 No one talks about that. No one talks about how the fishing and that club went downhill.
0:04 Speaker 01 You know what? There's a reason for that, Paul. I'm just gonna be honest, that's a kind of a shitty take because like-
0:11 Speaker 00 I mean, I'm paying top dollar to be in this hunting and fishing club. We've got a lot of hunting.
0:15 Speaker 01 Now, hold on a second. How good was that fishing?
0:18 Speaker 00 Really good.
0:19 Speaker 01 Really good.
0:20 Speaker 00 Alright, damn it.
0:26 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm Ed Helms and welcome back to Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. More specifically, a show in which I walk my wonderful guests through distinctly unwonderful moments from the past. Today, we'll be covering the infamous Johnstown Flood of 1889 and our guest, well, he's truly one of the best in the biz. And I mean that in both the general sense in that he's just an awesome dude, but also he is someone who is just constantly crushing it across like every platform in the whole business. You might know him from
1:05 Speaker 01 TV shows like The League or Black Monday, or his uber-popular podcasts, How Did This Get Made and Unspooled. Please welcome my very dear old friend, the great Paul Sheer.
1:19 Speaker 00 Ed, so excited to be here because honestly, it's the only time I've ever gotten any validation. You just reading off those credits made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow.
1:28 Speaker 01 I mean, you're correct. I didn't even mention your book. You just had a, you just wrote a book.
1:33 Speaker 00 I have a book. You know, look, you and I are now authors. We are bestselling authors. Very exciting.
1:39 Speaker 01 It is very exciting. I'm very proud of us. I was trying to, I was trying to think back to the origin of our friendship and it just, it falls into that huge basket of just wonderful people orbiting the UCB Theater in New York City around, what, like 1999?
1:56 Speaker 00 Right in that that area because you know, it's it's interesting. There are certain people that like Jason Manzoukis. Obviously, we co-host this podcast together. I know Jason for many years, but Jason was not somebody that was invited to my wedding. Uh, which is a crazy thing because we weren't that close at that point in our, he's definitely a friend. He didn't make that cut. He didn't make that cut.
2:18 Speaker 01 I was at your wedding.
2:19 Speaker 00 You were.
2:19 Speaker 01 And I was the whole time. I was like, where is Jason? This is horrible. Meanwhile, Jason gave a toast at my wedding as a matter of fact.
2:26 Speaker 00 It's wild to me that I talked to him all the time and he was somebody that was not, that was just not a close friend at that moment.
2:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, but it you're so right in that. Uh, I feel like there's so many people from that community that I that they somehow like merged with our DNA at that time. It's like we, we knew each other when we were just comedy larva wriggling around.
2:50 Speaker 00 We were performing in an old strip club where sometimes you'd be doing a show and people would get up and leave and you're like, did I do a bad job? Like, no, they just thought they were coming to a strip club and were very confused for the first 45 minutes of the show. They're like, this is great, but when are they going to take off their clothes?
3:05 Speaker 01 I remember there was a basement, uh, that you would get to through a trap door, basically.
3:11 Speaker 00 On the most rickety wooden staircase of all time to get down it.
3:15 Speaker 01 And you would go down there and it was like a grotto from, from like 16th century Paris. Wet brick walls and dirt floor.
3:26 Speaker 00 It was a, it was a, a New York City catacomb, if you will.
3:29 Speaker 01 That's what it was.
3:30 Speaker 00 Oh, I mean, you would see the craziest stuff and it was only one way in and one way out.
3:34 Speaker 01 Wait, somebody was giving haircuts down there.
3:37 Speaker 00 Well, haircuts down there and on stage. Uh, yeah, one of the, uh, one of the, uh, resident teachers.
3:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, a legend. One of the originals.
3:45 Speaker 00 No audience, no audience. Really crazy.
3:48 Speaker 01 That should have been its own show, the haircut show. Weirdly, it would have found an audience too. I'm sure of it.
3:54 Speaker 00 A hundred percent. Actually, more palatable than some of the shows that we did experiment with.
3:59 Speaker 01 Well, as, as one of, uh, the OG podcasters and one of, one of the greats in the podcasting biz.
4:06 Speaker 00 Thank you.
4:07 Speaker 01 No, truly like you've, you've carved out such an awesome niche. It's been so cool to see. You do a lot of shows in the studio. You do a lot of shows live on tour. Do you have a preference?
4:16 Speaker 00 I think, yeah, for me. I think there's something really fun about when it's just Jason, June and I chatting with each other. I think that that's always really a blast and we're not playing for laughs, but when we do it in front of an audience, it's, I like the, I like the showmanship of it. I like, I like getting out in front of an audience. I like finding where the jokes are, finding what they find funny and kind of chasing that because sometimes also it can get almost so, what I love about the studio is it's so casual that sometimes you are just having a conversation and maybe that's okay too. But like, you know, you forget like, oh, we gotta like hit some more jokes or, or that one thing is funny. Like, and I didn't even think it was that funny.
5:00 Speaker 01 Well, are you ready?
5:01 Speaker 00 I'm thrilled. I'm such a fan of Snafu. The book was great. I love the podcast. But the, the thing is, is I also have experience with floods here because
5:11 Speaker 01 No way.
5:12 Speaker 00 I'm not, not a major flood, but we've, I've had some flooding issues.
5:17 Speaker 01 In LA?
5:18 Speaker 00 In LA, you can't get over, I mean, obviously there's, natural disasters are awful, but flooding is like, it's infuriating because it's all there, but it's all wrecked and you can see it and you can't stop it and it's, and it's, you feel like powerless as the water comes in and you're sleeping and I flooded, I mean, I did also flood my own house too. And I have experience in floods, I'm excited.
5:42 Speaker 01 Paul, I'm concerned about you and your lack of water maintenance.
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8:01 Speaker 01 So, as I mentioned before, we're going to be talking about the Johnstown flood of 1889. Not the Johnstown. Not the Johnstown. Different flood, Kool-Aid flood. Also a different disaster. Yeah. Very different kind of disaster. Do you know anything about the Johnstown flood? Never heard a thing. Okay, oh, good. Well, I mean, not good. You should know better, honestly. Okay, sorry. But this will be fun, because it's all fresh. Our story begins in central southwestern Pennsylvania, a bustling bucolic little city. Now, just to orient you, Johnstown is about 52 miles east of Pittsburgh, founded in 1800 by Swiss immigrant Joseph Johns. It is nestled At the confluence of the Stony Creek and Little Conemaugh Rivers.
8:44 Speaker 01 Now, just 14 miles upstream from Johnstown on the Little Conemaugh River is the South Fork Dam. You know, cue the spooky music, because that's going to be real important real soon. Uh, I know you're, you're from Long Island originally. Do you know this area at all? Like Western PA?
9:02 Speaker 00 Very familiar with this area. This is right in my wheelhouse as far as places I know.
9:07 Speaker 01 Like from, from like getaways as a family?
9:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, look, I've been to Sesame Place, which is in Pennsylvania, or Hershey Park.
9:15 Speaker 01 You got all the amusement parks dialed in. All right, well, 1889 Johnstown is thriving. It was basically the Rust Belt before it got rusty. Steel was king, thanks to the mighty Cambria Iron Company. Nearby coal mines kept the fires burning and the bustling dense railroad lines all tied it together. This was a blue collar boomtown, and as a result, European immigrants were pouring in, looking for work. The population exploded by roughly 30,000 people in the mid 1800s. Now, on paper, Paul, explosive growth is great, right?
9:51 Speaker 00 Sure.
9:51 Speaker 01 But is it always good for a community?
9:54 Speaker 00 No.
9:54 Speaker 01 Or is it just an efficient way to stress people out?
9:56 Speaker 00 I mean, I know this from many years of playing the Sims video game. You can't build too quick. Uh, things happen. Uh, you know, you can't, you can't keep up. Supply and demand. Yeah, there's a lot of jobs, but then, you know, is there enough sewage plants? There are things, you know, things happen, you know?
10:12 Speaker 01 Paul, as, as someone who's known you a long, long time, so many of us have been trying to pull you out of SimCity.
10:18 Speaker 00 No, I gotta, I'm in the, and I'm not even in the Sims. I'm not even doing the people. I'm just doing the cities. I'm building the city.
10:25 Speaker 01 I can't, I'm so worried about when Sim goes VR and you'll like, just you'll be so immersed.
10:30 Speaker 00 I gotta put this baseball stadium somewhere, Ed.
10:33 Speaker 01 Well, you know, rapid growth can often lead to corner cutting, as we all know. And, uh, boy, will that come into play. So, uh, watch out. At some point, the state of Pennsylvania, or as it's formerly known, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Sold two of its major infrastructure assets, the Western Division Canal and the aforementioned South Fork Dam to a private investor named Henry Clay Frick.
11:01 Speaker 00 All right.
11:02 Speaker 01 Um, I hope, I wish this is the origin of the term frickin'. I don't know if that's true, but there will be good reason for it.
11:09 Speaker 00 Henry Clay Flick does feel to me like a, I don't know if this is the appropriate term, but like a robber baron has a name of.
11:16 Speaker 01 Okay, a hundred percent. He was like buddies with Carnegie and Mellon and all those guys. So Frick was a rising industrial heavyweight in his 30s, juggling coal, steel, and of course, the society clubs with a knack for turning big risks into even bigger fortunes. Naturally, the steel tycoons' first order of business upon this purchase was to convert the sleepy Lake Conemaugh above the dam into, wait for it, the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.
11:45 Speaker 00 Oh.
11:46 Speaker 01 Because, yeah, as we all know, rich people love to hang out with other rich people and just shoot things.
11:52 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, you have to. I mean, you know, that's the thing. Uh, what are you gonna do with your spare time without that? Now, this is interesting though, because you're saying it's a working class town, but now is kind of, uh, it's kind of gentrifying itself in a way, right?
12:04 Speaker 01 Well, yes. Now, this is 14 miles upstream of Johnstown. So we are in, um, and it's, and it's a significantly higher elevation. We're maybe like 500 feet higher in the mountains.
12:15 Speaker 00 Okay.
12:16 Speaker 01 And.
12:17 Speaker 00 And I guess 13 miles in the 1800s is, that's a, that's a far, like right now.
12:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a trick.
12:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's a hike. Yeah, it's a hike.
12:24 Speaker 01 We ain't got the Model T yet. So it's like a resort, um, and it, and the lake is kind of dumpy when he buys it, but his goal is to, is to really make it this beautiful place just for rich people to hang out and I guess scoff at poor people, maybe? Is that another one of their hobbies?
12:41 Speaker 00 It's perfect because you're high enough and you can look down. You can shoot.
12:44 Speaker 01 Literally look down.
12:45 Speaker 00 Shoot a bird and then look down at the poor people and laugh at them as you eat. Yeah, you're, you're squab.
12:50 Speaker 01 Exactly. So to do this, to make this resort, Frick and his resort investor buddies lowered the dam head to put. A road across the top of it, which reduced the dam's safety margin. He also sold off the dam's safety pipes and valves for scrap and he did not replace them. He slapped a fish screen over the spillway to ensure good fishing. Yeah, they stocked this lake with lots of good fish because keep in mind it is a hunting and fishing club.
13:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, you gotta have them both.
13:20 Speaker 01 If it's in the name, you gotta make sure the fish are in the lake, right?
13:23 Speaker 00 And you want to make sure it's easy to catch those fish. So you feel good about yourself.
13:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, you feel you stock that thing. Yeah. And now meanwhile, they're also just patching various leaks in this dam. It's a giant earthen dam with mud and straw and basically treating critical infrastructure like a summer tiki bar. Now, this is all because some rich guys really, really wanted a pretty lake and they wanted it fast and cheap. And I don't know, this is a kind of horrifying pattern in class dynamics. When rich people make terrible decisions like this, do you think it's honest ignorance with maybe a dash of optimism bias? Or is it just straight up willful negligence?
14:05 Speaker 00 You know, I never think that people truly are out to hurt other people. I don't think it's like, well, we're going to flood this down because it doesn't make, it's not good business sense. But I feel like you can, you can talk somebody into a bad idea really quickly where it's like, well, you know, we're just going to lower the, it's already high. We're just going to lower it a little bit.
14:24 Speaker 01 We need a road across the top.
14:26 Speaker 00 And that's actually going to help us and it's a bunch of small things that make sense. But then when you pile them all together, it is disaster. The thing that I'm curious about that you said that really jumped out to me was like, he took away the safety gauges of the, of the dam.
14:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, there were pipes and valves built in that, that were part of the release mechanism for, for.
14:49 Speaker 00 Seems like that's a hard one to kind of smooth over and also for no reason. Yeah.
14:54 Speaker 01 I mean, if you really dig into this, which I encourage listeners to, to, to read more about this. David McCullough wrote an incredible book about the Johnstown flood and it's pretty dark. Unlike you, I want to give some benefit of the doubt and I, because I think there's a ton of just optimism bias in people like this. Where it's just sort of like, I mean, this can't happen. And it's like, or this is too, that's too crazy to even contemplate that this whole massive dam could fail. Sorry, spoiler alert, but we're gonna, we're gonna get there.
15:24 Speaker 00 Wait a second.
15:26 Speaker 01 Now, uh, here's the, the, the good news is that this club, but once it was finished, was enormously successful and many of the richest men in the world joined this club, making it instantly profitable. Now, this was the largest reservoir in the country at the time. It's about two miles long, roughly one mile wide and 60 feet deep. Lake Conemaugh had basically become a summer paradise. Meanwhile, 14 miles downstream, Johnstown was churning away as the industrial little trooper town that it was. Uh, and to make room for this massive influx of workers that was occurring, the steel mills had begun dumping a lot of their slag or the industrial refuse from the, the steel making process. They were dumping
16:10 Speaker 01 this slag into the river to build up more land, uh, where they could build more homes. Of course, this had the unfortunate effect of narrowing the riverbed, which was sort of clogging it like an artery and, and it just was making it more prone to flooding. Basically, Johnstown now had the cardiovascular health of a chain smoking borscht belt lounge act.
16:30 Speaker 00 Yeah. So we really are, we're basically, we've created like, again, spoiler alert, the flood, we are creating the perfect, the perfect storm. It really like we're, we're building it.
16:42 Speaker 01 Oh, you, you stole my setup.
16:44 Speaker 00 Oh, no.
16:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, the perfect storm. Yeah. I mean, I'm just gonna read it anyway, but it's, uh, but no, you hit it right on the head. Basically you've got an entire region undergoing massive, very short sighted infrastructure changes and they are, all of these things are coalescing into, wait for it, say it.
17:03 Speaker 00 The perfect storm.
17:07 Speaker 01 Which is sadly the perfect metaphor.
17:10 Speaker 00 Because the actual perfect storm is about to hit.
17:17 Speaker 01 Uh, do you, do you ever feel that, that movies and history both build tension the same way? Like everything's kind of feels fine and there's that, that first act of a movie where you're just sort of building the Jenga tower and, and then.
17:32 Speaker 00 Just relaxed into it and you feel like nothing can go wrong. I mean, Titanic is a perfect example of it. James Cameron's Titanic. You're, it, it looks, what a wonderful film. What a beautiful boat. What great people.
17:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
17:44 Speaker 00 And then watch out.
17:45 Speaker 01 Yeah. Oh, and also Titanic, that's another, it's, that's another great example of the class dynamics at play.
17:55 Speaker 01 The storm is upon us. A note to my sound editor, please add some sound effects in post. Thank you very much. It's late May.
18:04 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
18:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's not very good. You're no Michael Winslow. Let's be honest.
18:10 Speaker 00 Oh, man. And you know what? I lost that part to him so bad. The reboot, of course.
18:17 Speaker 01 All right. It's late, it's late May 1889. A low pressure system that has, that had formed over Nebraska and Kansas two days earlier was now a massive storm directly over western, central Pennsylvania. And it was for real, very scary. It was the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the eastern United States to date. Estimates say that six to 10 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. I always feel like those metrics are like, what? Like, what does that mean? Six to 10 inches isn't very tall, but, but then you're like, oh, I guess that is actually crazy relative to what was normal for the time. And then here's the other thing is that there was still snow in the mountains. So the rain is falling on the snow, which is creating even more water
18:58 Speaker 01 coming from the fresh snow melt. Creeks and streams were quickly overrun, taking down trees and other debris. Even telegraph lines and rail lines were starting to come down. This is just from the, the rainstorm. We haven't even gotten to the, the real disaster yet. The next morning, it's May 31st. The president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, Elias Unger, awoke in a tizzy. It was still pouring rain and as such, that damn, damn, damn near was overflowing.
19:30 Speaker 00 Well, now what do you do? Yeah. Cause this is the moment where you know, like, this is the problem with a natural disaster. You can see it start to come, right? Like this is it. Like this morning, he knows, but what can you do? You can't, you almost can't do anything to stop it at this point, can you?
19:47 Speaker 01 He tries. Unger, Unger quickly gathered a group of men to unclog the debris. They'd put a fish strainer basically at the spillway to keep fish from leaving the lake. And so that was now completely clogged with debris and so no water was getting. Out of the lake, it was only rising.
20:05 Speaker 00 Oh boy.
20:06 Speaker 01 He sent one of his engineers, John Park, on a horse down to the telegraph office. Uh, he wanted to issue a warning to the people of Johnstown. The dam was in danger of collapsing.
20:17 Speaker 00 Get out of there.
20:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. Now, uh,
20:20 Speaker 00 It's like what the, in the Fantastic Four, New Galactus was coming there. Get out, get out of the city, guys.
20:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:25 Speaker 00 Get out of the city.
20:25 Speaker 01 I don't know what you're talking about, but yes, exactly.
20:30 Speaker 01 This was tricky for two reasons. Number one, I would think that in, if like, under this kind of duress, like sending a telegraph message, actually tapping the thing.
20:39 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
20:39 Speaker 01 Must have been like, like so hard to do right. Like you're just like, cause you're probably shaking, you're trembling and it's like,
20:48 Speaker 00 Well, that's why you have to hire the best. It's like you have to hire the best, uh, telegraph. They, they have to be emotionless, you know, whether you're
20:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're right.
20:56 Speaker 00 Breaking up with your husband, uh, you're telling somebody that a loved one has died or telling you that the, an impending flood is happening.
21:02 Speaker 01 Well, to make matters worse, telegraph lines were down.
21:05 Speaker 00 Well, they're down, right?
21:06 Speaker 01 So, so we're didn't even, it didn't even get there. Uh, no messages were sent to Johnstown. And even so, there were people racing down on horses and stuff, telling people, but there had been so many false alarms that the dam was gonna burst over the previous decades that, that there was also a kind of like blasé sense about it.
21:25 Speaker 00 This is the, the sky is falling kinda Chicken Little moment.
21:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:28 Speaker 00 And this is why I think again, that like, we prepare a lot for something terrible. You know, you're always like ready for something bad to happen. And then I would say 95% of the time, the, the worst version doesn't happen, but you know, uh, and then you're, oh, I prepared for nothing. I did all the things. So I can imagine here that they've probably had some moments like, okay, you know, they're not gonna, they're not buying it.
21:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's the whole cry wolf scenario.
21:55 Speaker 00 Yes.
21:55 Speaker 01 You get, you get kinda tired of freaking out and who knows, but this one, this one was real and it was real, real bad. There was a lot of drama at the top of the dam. Some guys were, were trying to actually stack more material on the top of it. Uh, but they could feel the dam moving and so they, they got off and that. Unger guy was like, get out there. And they were like, no, we're not going.
22:17 Speaker 00 Is this like an earth dam?
22:18 Speaker 01 Yes. What's interesting about this type of dam is that when they do breach, it is almost always catastrophic because the flow of water instantly compromises the entire structure and it begins just washing out the, the material of the dam, as you can imagine. So at 2:50 PM, the dam is finally compromised and it collapses and the water just comes rushing out. Now, South Fork is the first little town to be hit by this flood. The town thankfully is on a little bit higher ground, but 20 or 30 houses were still destroyed. Tragically, four
23:01 Speaker 01 people were killed in South Fork. The rest of the citizens were able to get to safety in time, but this flood was just beginning. And a word of warning, it's about to get real grim. I gotta ask you, Paul, if you were in like Johnstown or South Fork that day, would you be the guy like calmly sandbagging? Or are you the guy sprinting for higher ground like it's the last chopper out of Saigon?
23:25 Speaker 00 You know, it's interesting. My, uh, my gut is always to be the calm sandbagger. My wife's job is to get the hell out and, um,
23:37 Speaker 01 I mean, that might be your job, but what, what are you doing? Like, what's your, what's your, what is your adrenaline telling you to do?
23:43 Speaker 00 I always say that my wife and I are like kind of Kirk and Spock, the way we look at things. Like I'm, I'm looking at it very logically and my wife is like, let's just go.
23:50 Speaker 01 Oh, I love that.
23:51 Speaker 00 I think in this moment, uh, you know, look, if my wife gets the urge to run, I'm going to be following her.
23:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think at a certain, it's like, you know, when it's this insane and, and we're about to hear more about it. It's like, you just run best you can.
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27:35 Speaker 01 The flood raced down the 14 miles of the little Conemaugh River Valley, destroying everything in its path. I mean, how quickly? In seconds? Is it minutes? What have we got here? It's moving a lot faster than you can run. I'll put it that way. Okay. At one point, the flood was briefly stopped by a railroad bridge, but it eventually pushed past the bridge, gaining even more momentum. It raced through to more small towns with massive force, destroying literally everything. At this point, because the gorge is so deep, it's sort of like funneled and the force of the water is so intense that it wipes these towns out to the bedrock. There is nothing but bedrock left in the wake of the flood. And then Johnstown.
28:18 Speaker 01 Residents heard a deafening roar before they saw it, but most even had no idea that this roar could be a flood. Suddenly, a massive wall of debris slammed into, first, the Cambria ironworks. The water swept up railroad cars, barbed wire, which was a product of these steel plants. It then reached Gautier wireworks, causing boilers to explode. And emit black smoke, just making it a more nightmarish scenario. Just fifty seven minutes after the collapse of the dam. The flood reached the center of Johnstown, moving at a whopping forty miles per hour. And it was up to sixty feet high in some places.
29:02 Speaker 01 This wall of water and debris that was just like, I mean, you know, just rushing through.
29:08 Speaker 00 Even knowing everything that I know in the movies that I've watched and many of them like Day After Tomorrow, great films. The, but like that sixty feet of water, right? It's like, and you're not, you're not an island. It's not a tsunami, but it is acting like a tsunami in a way.
29:24 Speaker 01 It really is acting a lot like a tsunami and, um, or an avalanche. It's sort of a combination of the two. And I remember it's so funny because I, when I was a kid, you know, I would hear about tsunamis and I would be like, bah, no big deal. I can swim. I can swim, a good swimmer, you know? But like in this situation, you can't like, it doesn't even matter how, how comfortable you are in the water. How good a swimmer you are because there is, it's barely water. It's just, it's like debris.
29:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, you're, you have a train wrapped in barbed wire heading for you. It doesn't matter if you're a good swimmer.
30:00 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. Johnstown residents were either crushed by debris or caught up in the barbed wire or drowned in their homes or places of work. Some folks were able to stay afloat on debris, waiting for help. Most people in this situation, they're, it's, they're overtaken so quickly and, and there's so much panic and chaos. That you're just grasping for anything that you can grab on to.
30:26 Speaker 00 A hundred percent, but this is why I travel with two hundred pound weights on me at all times, just in case, you know, it keeps me grounded.
30:31 Speaker 01 I know you're legendary in the rucking community.
30:34 Speaker 00 It's, and it's a hard of go to restaurants, things that goes out, but I'm ready for it.
30:38 Speaker 01 It's a pain for all of us who are friends with you, but yeah, it's very cool. We respect you for it.
30:42 Speaker 00 Thank you.
30:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, and this is kind of reminiscent of Rose in the Titanic, right? You brought up the Titanic, she found a chunk of, of something to cling to.
30:51 Speaker 00 To hold on to, yeah.
30:52 Speaker 01 I feel like there was room for Leo to have climbed up on there, but it's a big debate. I don't know.
30:57 Speaker 00 Well, you know what? You bring this up. This just came up. Now, obviously Mythbusters put it to the test. But James Cameron was not happy with Mythbusters and recently recreated the water temperature. And the thing and basically proved that at the rate that Leo was hyperventilating and freezing, he could not have like stayed on.
31:20 Speaker 01 That's so funny.
31:22 Speaker 00 It just, I just saw it the other day. Like he just did it the other day.
31:26 Speaker 01 That's amazing.
31:27 Speaker 00 Which is really funny to me.
31:28 Speaker 01 So fun, weird little, I wouldn't maybe not a fun fact, but a weird little additional Titanic connection here is that our buddy Frick had actually canceled his Titanic ticket because his wife had a sprained ankle and had to be hospitalized. So this guy, he can avoid a disaster here and there. Anyway, back in the middle of Johnstown. This is crazy. The Pennsylvania Railroad Stone Bridge, uh, which was this huge stone bridge in the middle of Johnstown. Uh, it became this kind of catch-all filter, which was, uh, so, so building up in this bridge was all of these twisted train rails and boxcars and barbed wire and entire buildings. And yes, sadly, of course, lots of bodies piling up against it,
32:13 Speaker 01 forming a temporary dam. Now this dam, uh, which was sort of catching the flood, redirected floodwaters upstream of the Stony Creek, which is the other river that, that kind of comes into the town of Johnstown. So now there's, there's, the flood is going upstream Stony Creek. Uh, it reaches a sort of a point where gravity then overtakes it again and pulls it back, unleashing a, unleashing a second wave that floods back into the city from the opposite direction, which is just completely bonkers.
32:51 Speaker 00 It's almost overwhelming to even comprehend what is going on. It sounds like, whoa, but to be in it, to be there, it just seems like, well, no one can survive this. This is, this is an insurvivable situation that you have presented.
33:06 Speaker 01 It is nuts. Now, it's about to get even more nuts. If you were writing this script, Paul Shear, uh, and you wanted things to get even worse in this moment. What would you do?
33:18 Speaker 00 I mean, I want to break another dam. I want to, I don't know, maybe dual dams or, or, uh, oh, gosh, I mean.
33:24 Speaker 01 Come on, think it through.
33:26 Speaker 00 Fires. We gotta have a fires. We gotta have a fire. Yeah.
33:28 Speaker 01 Okay, here's how things actually spiraled even more. Let's just throw in a completely new kind of natural disaster. The massive pile of flood debris at the Stone Bridge suddenly caught fire. At least 80 people were trapped inside the wreckage and killed just in this inferno. The fire raged for three full days, lighting up the ruins of the city, which is just heartbreaking and incredible.
33:52 Speaker 00 Well, I imagine there's also gasoline. There's things that there's oil in there. There's things that are gonna catch fire. Yeah.
33:56 Speaker 01 All the industrial waste of, of, of a big industrial town like piled up in there.
34:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's gonna, that's gonna keep it going.
34:04 Speaker 01 And trees, like, trees, which is just fire fuel. It's just like a big old mass of tons of trees that had been ripped out.
34:12 Speaker 00 So we got black smoke. We got waves. We got fires. This is truly a nightmare.
34:18 Speaker 01 It's epic.
34:18 Speaker 00 Uh, yeah, it's epic. This is like going on the ride at Universal Studios where they recreate the earthquake. We're, we're seeing everything.
34:24 Speaker 01 I'm gonna say it's a little worse than that.
34:26 Speaker 00 Hmm.
34:27 Speaker 01 I'm gonna say.
34:27 Speaker 00 Maybe King Kong?
34:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. Okay, okay. All right. Yeah. Maybe they threw the King Kong in the picture.
34:36 Speaker 01 So by the time this fire actually died out, the flood waters had receded and Johnstown was left with a staggering 30 acre heap of wreckage.
34:47 Speaker 00 Oh, my Lord.
34:49 Speaker 01 In some places 70 feet high, just the wreckage. Uh, this would take nearly three months to clear out. Um, we have a, a famous image taken from the cleanup here. This is the Schultz family house. The six people living in that house, uh, survived.
35:08 Speaker 00 Wow.
35:09 Speaker 01 This is an iconic photo that, that a lot of people think just sort of captures the insanity. There's so much cognitive dissonance looking at that.
35:16 Speaker 00 It clearly went on a little bit of a, a journey. Like, this house is not where it was. And, and wow, and the way that that tree goes through, like, if you were picturing the house as like two eyes and a mouth, it's gone through one of the eyes of the, uh, the top half of the window there. And it's really, wow. That's massive.
35:35 Speaker 01 Oh, he'll, he'll need a glass eye, for sure.
35:37 Speaker 00 I mean, a hundred percent.
35:38 Speaker 01 Let's get into the aftermath. The magnitude of the Johnstown flood was unimaginable. It ended in 17 million in damage, which is 600 million today. And this is, remember, this is a town of 30,000 people. It's not like New York City. Like, this is just an epic wipeout for this town. 2,209 people were killed, which made it the largest loss of civilian life.
36:04 Speaker 00 Oh, my Lord.
36:06 Speaker 01 At the time.
36:07 Speaker 00 All because a hunting and fishing club wanted to catch some fish a little bit easier.
36:12 Speaker 01 Well, I guess, yeah. But, I mean, did you taste those fish, Paul?
36:17 Speaker 00 I mean, it was so easy to catch, so easy to catch those fish.
36:20 Speaker 01 The loss of life was epic, and it wouldn't be surpassed until 1900, when the Galveston hurricane hit, which was also another epic natural disaster. This is crazy. There were even reports of the flood carrying bodies as far as Cincinnati, Ohio. Like, way, way down river. Reportedly, one baby survived on the floor of a house as it floated 75 miles down river from Johnstown.
36:51 Speaker 00 Isn't that like Baby Moses? Didn't they put Baby Moses in one of those, like, a little carrier in the water? Is that Baby Moses?
36:57 Speaker 01 But he didn't wash away. They just hid him in the reeds.
36:59 Speaker 00 Oh, okay. Oh, my God, buddy.
37:01 Speaker 01 Yeah. This little baby washed away, 75 miles away. And, wow, and, and it was fine. And, and that little baby grew up to be me.
37:14 Speaker 00 Well, Ed, aw.
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41:09 Speaker 01 All right, so news spread rapidly to the surrounding areas and support was provided in the form of clothing, disinfectants, fish, bread, cigars, whiskey, and weirdly, 20,000 pounds of ham, among other useful items. There's a lot more to this recovery effort that I wish I could get into more because it's incredibly beautiful and cool. But this is one of the first large-scale rescue efforts by the American Red Cross. And it's sort of like a huge-scale disaster relief, and it really kind of changed the game for disaster response.
41:48 Speaker 00 When you were saying this, I was starting to put together things that I remembered. Is this the first time the Red Cross exists? Or no, the Red Cross did exist, but this is the first time they were called into action?
41:57 Speaker 01 I think it's the first time they were called into action in this capacity. Claire Barton was a huge part of this recovery effort and stayed in the region for a long period of time, kind of running logistics.
42:10 Speaker 01 And just further cemented her legendary status as a humanitarian.
42:14 Speaker 00 There's a part of me that goes, do you, I mean, I guess you have to rebuild on some level. You have to, but should I mean, I don't know. It's like, is it worth? I mean, is it worth rebuilding because it could all happen again? And this is the kind of the same thing that happens in New Orleans when the dam broke in New Orleans. Is this too dangerous to do again? I mean, or, or do they find a way to just go, you know what? We're going to put more safety measures in. Yeah.
42:35 Speaker 01 Paul, I think you're forgetting that we're as a species, like we're basically cockroaches. Like we, we just, we just gotta make it work wherever the hell we are. And
42:46 Speaker 00 Clean out that 30 acres and start going again.
42:49 Speaker 01 You're asking questions that really have no place here, Paul.
42:55 Speaker 01 No, but, but, but, but there certainly were a lot of kind of infrastructure considerations that went into the redevelopment and rebuilding of Johnstown and the entire region that had been rather carelessly handled and or completely overlooked, obviously beforehand. The answer is yes, they rebuilt, they felt the need to rebuild. It was a very strategic location for so many, so many industries at the time. And it was rebuilt a lot more safely. That did not prevent future floods. Unfortunately, there were future floods in Johnstown and still are from time to time, but, but it is, it is much safer than, of course, it was.
43:36 Speaker 00 But the fishing has gone down and the, and that's why, that's why I stopped, you know, being a member of that club. Cause the, back when the fishing was good for a little bit and they really, you know, it went downhill.
43:47 Speaker 01 Yeah. After that.
43:48 Speaker 00 No one talks about that. No one talks about how the fishing in that club went downhill.
43:54 Speaker 01 You know what? There's a reason for that, Paul. I'm just gonna be honest, that's a kind of a shitty take because like.
44:00 Speaker 00 I mean, I'm paying top dollar to be in this hunting and fishing club. I've got a lot of hunting.
44:06 Speaker 01 How good was that fishing? Really good, really good.
44:09 Speaker 00 Really good.
44:09 Speaker 01 All right, damn it. Okay, so, uh, I, let me just throw this out there.
44:15 Speaker 00 Yes, sure.
44:16 Speaker 01 Because in times of disaster or mass casualties like this, I, I think something incredible about human nature emerges. We rally for each other. We were just talking about some of the rescue efforts, Claire Barton, among others, and all of these incredible resources that just flooded into the region. Sorry for the terrible metaphor, but, but so much support came, just kicked in from all around. We rally for each other. We come together. We help each other in these ways that might have seemed unthinkable just a day before a tragedy like this. Do you agree that this is such an incredible thing of humanity? Do you see it around you sometimes? And why is it so fucking rare? Not that it's rare, but why do we have to wait for disasters for this side of us to emerge?
44:58 Speaker 00 I, you know, it's interesting. I, I will say that, uh, being in New York City during nine 11, it was, I talk about this as like one of the most beautiful times post nine 11. In the sense of
45:11 Speaker 01 Agreed.
45:11 Speaker 00 The way that the city came together, uh, neighbors and, you know, there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of goodwill.
45:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:19 Speaker 00 And, um, and, you know, we even see out here at the fires that happened this year. Like, there's a lot of, how do we make a difference? How do we pull together? And you're right. And I think that ultimately we are society, we're cockroaches, we fall into patterns. And, um, there are many people like a Claire Barton and, and many other wonderful people who devote their lives to making sure that everybody has the same, you know, access to whatever. And we just get selfish and we forget and we forget about it. And then every now and then we see a commercial or we hear about something or we get caught up because we have a personal connection to it and then we move into action. But every now and then, when there's something that is undeniable, where everybody kind of kicks in, it's, it's
46:02 Speaker 01 It's the best of us.
46:03 Speaker 00 Um, yeah.
46:04 Speaker 01 The worst of us can bring out the best of us. Now, of course, as soon as the floodwater was dry, people began to look for someone to blame for the tragedy. And it wasn't long, uh, before the town turned to the South Falk fishing and hunting.
46:17 Speaker 00 Club, which you have to say like that.
46:19 Speaker 01 The South Fork.
46:20 Speaker 00 South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.
46:23 Speaker 01 And of course, our old friend, Henry Clay Frick.
46:27 Speaker 00 Now, here's a question I got for you. If I'm Henry Frick, I'm like, maybe I should have gotten on the Titanic because I don't want to face the wrath.
46:34 Speaker 01 Well.
46:34 Speaker 00 Of this town.
46:35 Speaker 01 He's gonna be fine. Don't worry.
46:37 Speaker 00 Okay.
46:37 Speaker 01 Survivors of the flood sued the club. The American Society of Civil Engineers launched a massive investigation. It ultimately concluded that while the dam was modified to be less secure, it would have failed either way. Now, it should be noted that the American Society of Civil Engineers was bankrolled by legendary tycoon Andrew Carnegie.
47:01 Speaker 00 Wow, okay, okay.
47:03 Speaker 01 Himself a member of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.
47:06 Speaker 00 Of course he was. It was good fishing.
47:08 Speaker 01 So perhaps they were not the most neutral referee in this matter. And indeed, more research in recent times has very much questioned those findings. Still, the courts ultimately ruled the flood was merely a, quote, "act of God."
47:28 Speaker 00 Well, you know, here's something that's interesting about it. This is a bona fide natural disaster that maybe in a way was worsened by dam precautions or maybe even staved off for a little, I don't know, like you don't know. I think that sometimes these are the things that change our lives. The Titanic has sent, like, created all these regulations, like these OSHA regulations, these things that we would never have.
47:54 Speaker 01 I think you're being generous.
47:56 Speaker 00 Why am I on the side of the tycoons? I shouldn't be on the side of the tycoons.
47:59 Speaker 01 You're always sticking up for the moneyed interests.
48:02 Speaker 00 Just want to get that, I want to get that membership back.
48:04 Speaker 01 Whether or not it was criminal, we can never know necessarily, but but bad mistakes were made. There's more details about someone who was offering to make the necessary fixes to the dam in advance of
48:19 Speaker 00 Oh, boy.
48:19 Speaker 01 of all of this. And they were just like, eh, it would be too inconvenient for the club, so we're not going to do it and.
48:25 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, because you don't want to have those people out there working. When you catch a fish.
48:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:28 Speaker 00 You don't want those people banging, banging on the thing.
48:31 Speaker 01 Well, they probably have to drain the lake in order to make repairs.
48:34 Speaker 00 I'm coming here for peace of mind, not to get a bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Yeah, exactly.
48:38 Speaker 01 Well, either way, without a legal obligation to do so, Frick and the club never accepted responsibility. This is, this is a very common theme throughout my study of snafus. Virtually no one ever is held accountable in any way. Frick, however, did go on to be embroiled in other controversies and he even did a few good things also. He amassed the incredible Frick Art Collection in New York City.
49:03 Speaker 00 Oh, yes, yes.
49:05 Speaker 01 That fricking guy. I love that art collection. Yes, the Frick. I took many trips to the Frick and I enjoyed, I enjoyed the Frick. And now I am, I am frustrated to know that, what a scoundrel he might have been. But Frick was also a part of the super anti-union forces that led to the violent Homestead Strike in 1892. He even survived an assassination attempt during it. Not to tease you, but we will save that snafu for another day.
49:34 Speaker 00 Ooh, I love that.
49:35 Speaker 01 Yes, indeed. We were talking before about some of the ways the infrastructure was improved after the flood. Uh, this is interesting. Johnstown built an inclined railway in 1890, which allowed folks to easily go back and forth from the nearby town of Westmont, which was at a much higher elevation, safer from flooding, et cetera. Um, as well as safer from the leftover pollution. Here's a photo of the inclined railway.
50:00 Speaker 00 Boy, look at that. All right. So there you go. Yeah. So some, so they, they made some changes, some good changes. And, uh, but here's what I'm going to say, like for somebody like Frick, do you think that he feels any responsibility? Or when you're in that level, the reason why you're that successful, the reason why you're that wealthy is because you don't ever. Naval gaze. You never, you never think it's my fault.
50:22 Speaker 01 That is a great question, and it is one of the things that I never, I, I just never understand about, about people who do like, large-scale, dastardly things. Like, I think that in order to sort of persevere as a tycoon of this nature, like, you have to have the most toxic coping mechanisms. You are never analyzing these things. You're never even considering the possibility that you might be culpable, except in the, uh, in the possibility that you might face legal repercussions, in which case you're like, mounting your legal defense. And, uh, and it is, it is amazing the extent to which
51:07 Speaker 01 powerful and, and/or wealthy people, um, escape culpability, both literally and, to your question, I think even in their own conscience.
51:17 Speaker 00 I think on some level, every great leader, tycoon, uh, even athlete, has to have this ability to separate themselves from their actions, because I don't think you could go to bed at night. I always say that if every president has to be a little bit insane, or at least narcissistic, because you're saying, I'm taking the whole world on my shoulders. And if you, and if people die, you're like, well, all right, I'll get them tomorrow. Like, and, and you know, because you have to get back up.
51:41 Speaker 01 Which they will. People will die under your watch as a president.
51:44 Speaker 00 A hundred percent. And I think that's the thing that unites all these people, and, and for better and for worse. It's just a very, I would even say Clara Barton probably is like that to a certain, like, I have to keep on moving. I can't take on all this grief. Yeah.
51:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. So finally, Paul.
51:58 Speaker 00 Yes.
51:59 Speaker 01 Being a guy who dissects Hollywood's most baffling films, you will appreciate this. In 1926, they actually made The Johnstown Flood as a silent disaster movie. And, like any great disaster flick, the plot is shaky, but the special effects for the time were spectacular. Can we, uh, just see this one little clip?
52:22 Speaker 00 This is exciting. Whoa.
52:27 Speaker 00 Oh my goodness. I'm already loving, I'm gonna watch this whole entire thing.
52:32 Speaker 01 Look at these special effects.
52:34 Speaker 00 Holy cow.
52:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is, uh, this is great. Mind blowing.
52:39 Speaker 00 Wow.
52:40 Speaker 01 So you can tell it's all done in miniature.
52:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:43 Speaker 01 And then, and then watch how it's, um, watch how it's like superimposed or double exposed somehow.
52:50 Speaker 00 Some of the filmmaking, wow, this is fascinating. I just am blown away by the amount of wow.
52:57 Speaker 01 Look at that. How do they do that? That looks so real.
53:01 Speaker 00 That looks unbelievable. I don't even understand because people are flying away too. This is the thing, people, the special effects that were going on in these early days are truly outstanding. You know, these sci-fi movies, like when you think about what they had and what they were, that looked amazing.
53:16 Speaker 01 Yeah. Paul, how did this get made?
53:18 Speaker 00 I mean.
53:19 Speaker 01 And I don't mean that ironically, in the way that you do. I mean, how did they actually do that technically?
53:25 Speaker 00 I am gonna get off this podcast and do some research because I'm interested.
53:30 Speaker 01 Paul Scheer, this has been a goddamn delight.
53:33 Speaker 00 What a blast. What a fun blast.
53:36 Speaker 01 I just, I love deconstructing with you about anything.
53:40 Speaker 00 What a gift this, uh, this is because every one of these, it makes me feel smarter. I did not know about the, the Johnstone, uh, flood. And yes, it was awful, but I feel good that these guys got some good fishing in. And that, you know, so that was the moral of it, right? That they, there was some good fishing, but there was a cost in it.
53:57 Speaker 01 Of course. No, I really do love and appreciate how your brain works and I'm really grateful that you came on and shared it with us.
54:03 Speaker 00 Happy to be here. Thank you, Ed, for having me. Uh, what a blast.
54:06 Speaker 01 Of course. Cheers.
54:07 Speaker 00 Bye.
54:09 Speaker 01 Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post-production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith, technical direction and. Engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,
54:50 Speaker 01 and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etor, Nathan Otowski, and Alex Corral. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
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