American Experience1988

[first lines]

Narrator:
On the 31st day of May, 1889, more than two thousand lives were lost when the South Fork Dam collapsed. An entire lake, 20 million tons of water, crashed down the Conemaugh valley through a half dozen towns on its way to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It wiped out nearly everything in between, but by many accounts, Johnstown suffered the most gruesome and disturbing fate of all.