Synopsis

At a mountain resort, fourteen miles up the valley, the captains of industry and their families had established a secluded summer haven beside an abandoned earthen dam. However, the dam's construction was fundamentally unsound. On May 31, 1889, following prolonged spring rains, it failed catastrophically, unleashing a surge of water over thirty feet high that swept through the small Pennsylvania city. Over two thousand people perished, and thousands more were rendered homeless.