History comes alive

California has earthquakes, Kansas has tornados and Florida has hurricanes. Living in… California has earthquakes, Kansas has tornados and Florida has hurricanes. Living in Western Pennsylvania, we don’t really think of ourselves as residing in a place where natural disasters occur. On May 31, 1889, the residents of Johnstown, Pa. didn’t either. Oh, how wrong they were.

On that fateful day, the Conemaugh Lake dam burst, unleashing 20 million tons of water that flooded the 18-mile valley between the lake and Johnstown, leaving 2,209 dead.

As hard is it is to imagine what that amount of water would look like even 18 miles down the valley, a DVD entitled “Johnstown Flood” depicts it all too vividly. Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, the DVD chronicles the events leading up to the flood – the all-too-familiar story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” – the flood itself, and the devastating after-effects.

Residents ignored the warnings to evacuate. One man tells another that the flood is coming, and the latter replies, “I call you and your horse a coward. I’m staying.” He perished in the flood. Families were separated from each other, sometimes floating on pieces of wood to safety, others being carried to their deaths. The documentary points out that most of the victims perished due to blunt force to the head, rendering them unconscious and proving to be the cause of their subsequent drowning. Robberies ensued, with some robbers slicing off women’s fingers to steal valuable jewelry.

The DVD is filmed in black and white, which adds to the depiction of destruction. Drawings and photographs of the aftermath are also used. Actors playing survivors of the flood give their testimonies of the events as they saw them, some even smoking cigars.

The documentary has Pittsburgh roots. It was filmed partially in Pittsburgh, and the founder of Pittsburgh’s Inecom Entertainment Company – who distributed the documentary – Michael Bussler, received a bachelor’s degree from CMU.

The producer/director of the film, Mark Bussler, didn’t have it easy while filming the DVD. His biggest obstacle in filming the documentary was filming the summer events in winter – braving the frigid winter weather and hiding snow in the shots.To bring viewers back to the present, the black and white cinematography gives way to color shots of the area today: the drained reservoir, the solemn-looking Plot of the Unknown Dead in Johnstown’s Grandview Cemetery and the lush colorful landscapes.

The documentary clocks in at a little over an hour, and not a minute is wasted. It is full of historical facts, but manages to convey them in an interesting, fast-paced manner.

The only downfall of the documentary is that it fails to mention the Johnstown Floods of 1936 and 1977. Perhaps second and third installments of the documentary will follow.

On Saturday, Oct. 11, producer/director Mark Bussler will give a talk about the making of the “Johnstown Flood.” It will take place at the Barnes ‘ Noble bookstore at the Waterfront in Homestead at 1 p.m. For more information, call (412) 462-5743.