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Education Materials

After Your Visit

Rescue, Recover, and Relief

During the following discussion of the next steps in Johnstown’s recovery, keep a running list of “next-step needs” that the students suggest.

Discussion: Next Steps

Previously, we learned what the Citizens Committee decided needed to be done right away when they met the day after the Flood. What needs did the Committee decide were the most immediate? [Finances, Supplies or Commissary, Morgues, Removal of Dead Animals and Debris, Police, Hospitals]

That was just the beginning, of course. After the survivors were rescued, the fires extinguished, bodies found, dead animals disposed of, what were the next steps?

  • What had to be done to care for homeless survivors’ day-to-day needs?
  • What had to be done to start rebuilding for the future?
  • What did individual families need to do to start putting their lives back together?
  • What did Johnstown need to do as a community?

Five Rs on the Comeback Path

Distribute as a hand-out, project as a slide, or transfer to the chalkboard “Five Rs on the Comeback Path.”

Discuss the “Five R’s” :

  • Which of the “R’s” deal with the past–the damage done by the Flood?
  • Which of the “R’s” deal with the present?
  • Which of the “R’s” deals with the future?
  • What activities on our list deal with the past — the damage done by the flood? What activities deal with the present — surviving day-to-day in the midst of the devastation? What activities look to the future?
  • Which of our “next-step” ideas should happen first? Which steps require other things to be done first?

Now we’re going to see what Johnstowners and the people helped them really did do to start rebuilding between June and December 1889.

Recovery Timeline Activity

Print out and distribute the web page “Events on Johnstown’s Recovery Timeline.”

Download worksheet “Healing Takes Time.”

Healing Takes Time

Recovery Timeline Directions

Color-Code the events listed (on days with more than one event, color-code each event separately):

  • Rescue: Red
  • Recover: Orange
  • Relief: Yellow
  • Rebuild: Green
  • Remember: Blue

Cut the dates apart and arrange them on the timeline worksheet

Choose photos from the Rescue, Relief, and Rebuild Picture Galleries for each step along the way. Print the photos, and cut them out. (Hint: print out the thumbnail indexes for a full collection of photos that are a convenient size for this activity)

Arrange photos on the timeline worksheet

Discuss

  • What color patterns can you see in the timeline? What do these patterns tell you about the timing of recovery efforts?
  • What things happened first? What happened next?
  • How long did rescue efforts take? Recovery? Relief? Rebuilding? Which stages took the longest amount of time? Which took the shortest amount of time? Why?
  • At what point on this timeline does it seem Johnstowners took their first step to rebuilding their community? What was this first step?
  • What steps did they take toward recovery that we didn’t have on our list? Why might this have been important to them, but didn’t occur to us? What did we have on our list that they didn’t have on theirs? Why was this step left out of their recovery efforts?

Optional Extension: Primary Sources – Reports on Relief Efforts

If time and your students’ reading levels allow, the reports by officials in charge of various aspects of relief and recovery at Johnstown make fascinating reading. Assign students or small groups of students one of the reports below:

Official reports on relief efforts

Beale’s informal reports:

Discuss:

  • What recovery efforts did each of these reports describe?
  • What events or activities did they mention that we don’t have on our list or on the timeline? Add any missing activities to the timeline.
  • What did each author consider his or her biggest challenge? Where they able to solve it eventually? How?
  • What do the reports suggest should have been done differently? Why?
  • What did people learn about dealing with community disasters from Johnstown?

Discussion: Lessons for today

  • What do we do now to respond to a disaster? Who is in charge?
  • How is today’s disaster response the same as Johnstown’s? How is it different? Why? [think about differences in technology, transportation, communication, attitudes and values, population, etc.]
  • Think about local, state and national response to natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes. What did the Red Cross do? What similarities can you see in what they did at Johnstown?
  • What did the National Guard do? How does their role compare with the Guard’s role at Johnstown?
  • FEMA didn’t exist in 1889. What role does it play during disasters? What might it have done in Johnstown?
  • What are the advantages of having federal help during disasters? What are the disadvantages?
  • Considering what you’ve learned about disaster relief for Johnstown, what can be done to improve our disaster response now?

Rebuild

A Blank Slate

While the Flood forced Johnstown to start all over, it gave the town a hard-won “clean slate” to do things differently when they rebuilt. The following two activities, “Redrawing the Map” and “A New View from the Hill,” challenge students to take on both the challenge and the possibilities. You may choose to do either the Map or View, or both, depending on your students’ abilities and your instructional goals.

“Redrawing the Map” Activity

Up to now, we’ve considered Johnstown’s immediate needs right after the flood and in the months following — rescue, recovery, and relief. After the National Guard, the Red Cross, and other relief workers went home, the citizens of Johnstown were left with the huge job of rebuilding.

Instead of focusing on how they would survive from day to day, they could think about what they needed to grow over the long term. It was a chance to change things and make the town better. They could modernize and make the town safer. Individual families could do the same with their houses: they could build the same exact house, a different house in the same place, or a new house in a completely different area of town.

When city planners today make decisions about what the city will be like in the future, they don’t start with a map; they start with a list of needs.

Have students brainstorm a list of needs that all cities have, then a list of special needs that apply to Johnstown. These lists will serve as guides as they work on their plans and, later, evaluate the plans. For example:

Needs all cities would have in 1889:

  • Transportation, local and long distance
  • Communication systems
  • Work
  • Housing
  • Safety, health (fire, police, water and sewage, hospitals)
  • Schools
  • Retail: places to buy what can’t be produced at home, especially farm goods
  • Parks, recreation, entertainment
  • Churches and synagogues
  • Energy, lighting heating

Johnstown’s special needs:

  • Flood control;
  • Challenging terrain;
  • Meeting the needs of pre-existing businesses and industries;
  • Uniting the individual boroughs into a city for the first time.

Since all good city planning is the result of many people’s contributions, this activity makes an ideal cooperative learning project. As each group devises its plan, individual students can champion one or more of the needs above to ensure that the plan meets those needs.

Download Redrawing the Map activity

“Redrawing the Map” Worksheet Directions

  • After the Flood swept through and the debris was hauled away, much of Johnstown was a clean slate.
  • This map of Johnstown was drawn in 1889, just before the Flood. The areas “ghosted out” in white were either leveled by the Flood of so damaged that they had to be torn down. Only the buildings in the black areas — few and far between — remained.
  • Johnstown was starting over.
  • Imagine that you are the city planner in charge of designing the new Johnstown:
    • How much of the old Johnstown should be rebuilt?  Why?
    • What things will you do differently? Why?
    • What street grid will you design?
    • What can you do to protect citizens from future floods?
  • Draw your design over this map to show the changes you will make.

Compare designs with the whole class. Discuss:

Have the planners taken into account all Johnstown’s needs (above)? What, if anything, has been left out?

What is the strength of each design?

How would you decide which plan to use, if you were on the Johnstown Citizen Committee in 1889?

How do these plans compare with what Johnstown actually ended up doing (see the “Rebuilding Johnstown … Again and Again” photo gallery for panoramic views of the rebuilt Johnstown (1891 and 1904 views)?

Optional extensions to this activity:

  • Combine the best of each design for a committee to incorporate into one design for the whole class. This approach comes closer to reflecting the real urban design process, which must take into account the opinions of many stakeholders, not just one planner or a group of planners.
  • Proceed to the next activity “A New View from the Hill” and draw the view a visitor to the new Johnstown might see after your plan is built.
  • Skip to the activity “Rebuilding Johnstown… again and again,” then design a plan for Johnstown of the future.

“A New View from the Hill” Activity

This activity encourages students to imagine and draw a new Johnstown.

Download worksheet: New View from the Hill

“A New View from the Hill” Worksheet Directions

  • When the floodwaters left, Johnstowners found that most of their town had been washed away (see photo on right taken one week after). Most remaining buildings were so damaged they had to be torn down anyway. After the debris was hauled away, Johnstown was starting over. Below is the same photo with the debris digitally removed:

Imagine that you are a city planner designing the new Johnstown:

  • How much of the old Johnstown should be rebuilt?  Why?
  • What things will you do differently? Why?
  • What can you do to protect citizens from future floods?

Draw your vision for the new Johnstown in the cleared area of the photo below. If you did “Redrawing the Map”, try matching the drawing and map.

Rebuilding Johnstown …Again and Again

The Rebuilding Johnstown: Again and Again photo gallery contains panoramic photographs of Downtown Johnstown from before the 1889 Flood to the present.

All the photos are taken from the same general vantage point (from the Inclined Plane) looking toward the Little Conemaugh River valley in the background (where the Flood made its entrance). The Stonycreek River is in the foreground. You may wish to use corresponding maps on this site along with these photos to help identify landmarks.

Interestingly, the series of panoramas suggests that Johnstown (like all cities) has been rebuilt numerous times over its 200-year history. The rebuilding after the 1889 Flood — an involuntary destruction and rebuilding that happened over a very short period of time — was certainly the most dramatic! Other rebuilding efforts have been more gradual. The latest rebuilding — after the economic disaster of the 1980s and 90s — is still going on. This is the time to build “the next Johnstown” and students will play a part in planning Johnstown’s future. These are some of the conclusions that students may come to through the activities and discussion that follow.