Post a further statement of 250-300 words responding to an argument made by a team member from the opposing side.

The Johnstown Flood Group

Post a further statement of 250-300 words responding to an argument made by a team member from the opposing side.

Oscar Perez:

“The responsibility of the Johnstown Flood does not lay solely on the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. The cause of the flood was the disrepair and faultiness that the dam had fallen into for many years and it not being able to withstand the pressures of the rain that had fallen that fateful night on May 30, 1889. The responsibility of the break in the dam falls onto the state of Pennsylvania and the precedent that was set for many years before the break of the dam. Many dams had been breaking through out the state over the course of many years, before the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club ever bought the dam. The idea of dams breaking had been so common place with the people that even when warnings were sent to the people of Johnstown, they laughed and ignored the warnings.

The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club had bought the dam with the sole intention of creating a mountain summer resort, not to maintain and hold back water. Even the pressure release valves weren’t meant to alleviate the pressure on the dam, but to lower the water levels for the club’s preferences in the lake depth. When they purchased the lake, their intention wasn’t to maintain the dam and that falls on the state of Pennsylvania for not having a legal precedent over the private ownership of public land features such as a dam.

Even so, with no legal responsibility to maintain the dam, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club actively worked to alleviate the pressure on the dam from the rainfall that occurred the nights before the dam’s breaking. They sent many warnings to those in the valley below, which were ignored, and would dig in various points to allow the water a way to rush out without destroying the dam or flooding the town. Although these plans would ultimately fail, they weren’t the plans of a public entity in charge of the safety and protection of those below, but the plans of men who were trying to save people from an unprecedented amount of rainfall behind a dam that was built to fail 50 years prior.”

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