The Johnstown Flood

Originally 20 minutes long, The Johnstown Flood picked up an Oscar in 1991 for Best Documentary Short Subject. Expanded for The American Experience series, this updated version spends more time examining the chain of events which led up to the 1889 flooding of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The story actually begins a decade earlier with the formation of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an elite group of Pittsburgh businessmen and their families including Carnegie, Fricke, and Mellon. The upkeep of the earthen dam holding back the lake waters that club members swain in and yachted on was the responsibility of the club. Despite pleas from Daniel J. Morell, owner of Cambria Ironworks in Johnstown (a community of 30,000 in the valley below the lake resort), the club made no serious repairs to the dam. Engineer John Fulton said that it was an "accident waiting to happen." He was right. On May 31,1889, the dam broke, sending a wave over 30 feet high through Johnstown. In the space of some ten minutes, 2,200 people lost their lives. How the community managed to rebuild Johnstown makes a fascinating epilogue to this exceptional documentary. Produced by Charles Guggenheim, The Johnstown Flood is contemporary documentary-making at its finest, with stirring original music, excellent panning and scanning of photos (replete with the appropriate sound effects), and dramatic reconstructions (shot in black & white) to lend movement to the film. The scenes of the flooding of Johnstown are, in the older sense of the word, awesome. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (Available from: PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698; 1-800-424-7963.)