Pennsylvania Disasters

Kevin Coolidge

Where were you the morning of September 11, 2001? I was at work when I received the first vague news report of a plane crash in New York City. Along with the world, I learned of the nightmare unfolding at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Horrified, I couldn’t stop watching. Meanwhile, an unknown life and death struggle was taking place in the skies over western Pennsylvania. A fourth hijacked plane had reversed course and was believed to be heading to Washington D.C. The passengers of United Flight 93 decided take action against the four terrorists who had commandeered their plane.

The heroic decision to fight back came with a cost. Flight 93 plowed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, just short of a school filled with nearly 500 students. At the time, my cousin was attending school in Pittsburgh. I received a call from my aunt. She was frantic with worry. There wasn’t enough information; New York City was far away, but her little girl was close, too close to this calamity. The events of 911 touched my life. It is now a part of me.

Nevertheless, I am fascinated by disasters. Acts of nature; acts of men…these tragic events touch our lives and scar our hearts. It becomes part of who we are. It becomes our history. One journalist that understands this is Karen Ivory. She’s the author of Pennsylvania Disasters. She takes us back to some of Pennsylvania’s most catastrophic events, vividly recreating moments that changed the Keystone State forever. There are twenty-two true stories arranged chronologically from The Yellow Fever Epidemic in 1793 to the Quecreek Mine Rescue in 2002. There’s an account of Three Mile Island—the most serious accident to take place at an American commercial nuclear power plant, and there’s information on the Johnstown flood that killed more than 2,000 people. Shanksville and Flight 93 are there, too, along with other stories that are a chilling reminder to expect the unexpected.

Disaster touches us all. It was a childhood experience of seeing a broken dam that first interested a young boy in the Austin Disaster of 1911. The fifty-foot-high Austin dam was built in 1910 to provide water for the Bayless Pulp and Paper Mill. Bayless often ignored the recommendations of the civil engineer he hired, and opted for cheaper methods of construction. The results were tragic. When it was over, seventy-eight people were dead, hundreds injured, and much of the town destroyed. That young boy was Gale Largey and he grew up to write a book called The Austin Disaster, 1911: as reported in the media before Radio, Television, the Internet…

Today there is instant communication. We learned of the downed helicopter in Afghanistan minutes after it happens, even though it is a war zone. But in 1911 there was no satellite network. News could take days to reach international papers. Gayle’s book focuses on what was reported about the disaster.

Many of the accounts of the Austin disaster reflect what is known as yellow journalism. Yellow journalism is journalism that exploits, distorts, or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers. For some readers what happened in Austin was described as a “fiery holocaust” in which hundred were engulfed in flames, while readers of the San Francisco Chronicle were first told “…850 Drowned, 1000 Maimed,” then on the following day “…300 Perished, then “…150,”, but never the official figure of seventy-eight. Gale’s book is the result of twenty years of research, and to a large extent a continuation of his work done for his documentary he directed and produced in 1997.

Another book recently published about the Austin catastrophe is 1911 The Austin Flood by Paul W. Heimel. His book examines why the dam broke, who’s really to blame, and ultimately what lessons can be learned about this tragedy. Could it have been prevented? Did indifference and greed cause unnecessary deaths? Paul’s book comes with a list of those who died and poignant first-hand accounts of more than three dozen people who witnessed the flood and lived to tell about it. Paul’s great-grandfather was among the constables dispatched to Austin to assist in the rescue and recovery, and keep order in the stricken community.

Human tragedy…it touches us all—throwing us together, tearing us apart. Disaster may be in our DNA, but history and humanity endures…