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Upended house with a tree lodged in it after flooding, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA, 1889
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Describing this Johnstown flood as "flooding" doesn't quite capture the true horrifying magnitude of the disaster - its better to think of it as a very fast tsunami, full of barbed wire, that was also on fire. And this was all in the mountains, so there werent things like flood mitigation.
IIRC they had to bring in mining equipment and blast the debris to be able to clear them out, there just wasn't anything else you could do. Drifts got to 45' tall and everything was tangled together with barbed wire so that it essentially couldnt be moved. Just an absolutely insane disaster.
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