JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (WJAC) — 45 years ago, Wednesday, the city that thought it would remain flood-free woke up to the sight of their city underwater again.
84 people died in the 1977 Johnstown Flood, causing $340 million dollars in damage to the Greater Johnstown area. In today’s dollars, that would equate to more than $1.6 billion.
A deluge of rain that began the night before had inundated Johnstown, made worse by the failure of Laurel Run Dam, which overtopped and burst, sending 100 million gallons of water into the valley below. No flood in the United States has killed more people since.
There were warning signs that the dam could be in trouble, same as the South Fork Dam before it burst above Johnstown in 1889, creating the worst flood disaster in American history.
Today, trouble spots remain, and there’s a growing trend that such alarm bells are again being ignored.
A study of federal data done in May by the Associated Press shows there are more than 2,200 dams in the United States that are rated in poor condition that are also considered to be a high hazard, meaning its failure or misoperation will probably cause loss of human life. That’s more than 30 percent higher than when the AP did the same study less than three years earlier.
We told you last year that 22 of the 91 high-hazard dams in the 6 News viewing area are rated in poor condition. In Pennsylvania, 145 dams meet that criteria.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said that list will not be updated again until next year.
One of those dams, the Wilmore Dam, reached such levels last September that a Flash Flood Emergency was issued during heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.
The Cambria Somerset Authority, which owns and operates the dam, said the dam functioned as it was designed and the situation was overblown in part due to a warning from the National Weather Service which gave the appearance that the dam burst.
The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has upped the price tag on what’s needed to fix all the dam issues nationwide to $76 billion. Last year’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill will pump only about $3 billion into dam-related projects.
It will be a swim upstream to solve the problem, but the alternative is something we never want to see again.
WATCH | Chief Meteorologist Tony Martin looks back at the storms that led to the 1977 flood.
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