2005-03-08 The biggest news story since the murder of Abraham Lincoln

The South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club was an elite organization of the super rich and powerful. Members included, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Philander Knox and Robert Pitcairn. McCullough concludes that the club tampered drastically with the natural order of things and had done so badly. Moreover, the club ravaged much of the mountain country's protective timber, which caused dangerous flash runoff following mountain storms; they obstructed and diminished the capacity of the rivers; and they bungled the repair and maintenance of the dam. "Perhaps worst of all they had failed...out of indifference mostly...to comprehend the possible consequences of what they were doing, and partiularly what those consequences might be should nature happen to behave in anything but the normal fashion," which according to McCullough was exactly what was to be expected of nature.

The New York Times concluded that the cause of the flood was an engineering crime...that the dam was of inferior construction. Other publications reported the nation simmered with deep seated resentment of the rich. On a positive note, the help and aid to Johnstown was the greatest ourpouring of charity that the nation had ever seen. Additionally, the doctors, nurses and sanitation crews did a "spectacular" job of preventing a typhoid epidemic. And finally the author does not fail to report the countless others who went beyond the call of duty to perform tremendous acts of bravery. Unfortunately, the club members were never held accountable and were disgustingly "stingy" with disaster funding. On that note, a poem by Isaac Reed accurately captured the moment in history;

Many thousand human lives...
Butchered husbands, slaughtered wives,
Mangled daughters, bleeding sons,
Hosts of martyred litte ones,
(Worse than Herod's awful crime)
Sent to heaven before their time;
Lovers burnt and sweethearts drowned,
Darlings lost but never found!
All the horrors that hell could wish,
Such was the price that was paid for...fish!

Bert Ruiz