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On May 31st, the Wealthy Elite’s Callous Disregard of Ordinary People Cost Thousands of Lives [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-30
To Have and Have Not
Many of the richest people in the country hang out together at exclusive clubs and retreats in beautiful natural areas, while their companies ruin our environment. They pay their workers as little as possible, so many of their employees struggle to pay rent and make a living.
One of the starkest contrasts in lifestyles between the 1% and the rest of us is found above in Pennsylvania, where the elite gather at the secretive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club on a mountain lake, far above a crowded working class town in the polluted valley below.
Power and Privilege
And the tragic event at the end of May proves that trusting the rich to care for either their employees or any common people is a mass delusion. The wealthy titans of industry arrogantly ignored warnings that their actions were placing many lives at risk. Far from being the farsighted ‘geniuses’ they claim to be, their foolish negligence hastened economic devastation, that could have been avoided by making a few investments in safer and more reliable infrastructure. The super-rich only care for themselves and their closest friends, and the rest of us are foolish to trust them with our lives and livelihoods.
The powerful CEOs first twisted the rules for their own convenience and then used the courts to evade financial responsibility for their criminal negligence. For all the bombastic media reports fawning over their leadership skills, as soon as something goes wrong, they hide behind their high-priced lawyers and consultants and use their political influence to bend the courts to their will. While regular people still search for lost loved ones, these greedy men refuse to be held accountable.
I can only hope that the unforgettable destruction and murder of so many innocent families will lead to changes both in the law and in society, so that the rich can be held liable for their negligence and that our society stops coddling the rich, who obviously don’t care about the rest of us. Why should a small group of men control so much wealth, so much of our economy and so much political power? Despite their fortunes, they are not better than us. Based on their behavior, they are far worse!
Disaster Report
Contributing factors were deforestation, industrial waste dumping and infrastructure projects that narrowed the valley, and crowded living conditions for employees, including many immigrant families.
The proximate cause of the disaster was modifying the private Conemaugh Dam. Speculative real estate deals helped rush development at the lakeside retreat. Club members were concerned that some of their members’ wives’ expensive dresses had gotten muddy while getting out of their vehicles to cross the dam on their way to parties at the clubhouse. So, they ordered that the earthen dam be widened to allow vehicle traffic. While the earlier version of the dam included several relief valves and pipes, the new version made spillways obsolete and had no way of releasing pressure.
Heavy rains filled the lake and soaked the dam and surrounding countryside with water. Lidar estimates that the roughly 2 mile by 1 mile lake contained almost 4 billion gallons of water when the dam failed. In roughly an hour, the lake drained a volume of water roughly equivalent to the Mississippi River delta through a narrow gorge, removing everything, down to bedrock.
Just before entering Johnstown, the flood was momentarily stopped by a stone viaduct, until it built up sufficient pressure to remove the obstacle and wipe the town off the map, factories, homes and all. The wall of water reached 60’ in height and traveled at 40 miles per hour. Many were killed instantly in collapsing buildings, while others were crushed by debris or drowned.
The final death toll was 2,208 people. Bodies were recovered as far downstream as Cincinnati Ohio.
Clara Barton led the first major Red Cross disaster recovery effort.
Warnings were sent but ignored, as there had been false alarms.
None of the club members were ever held responsible.
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