Washed Away

At 2:30 on an unseasonably cool, partly cloudy afternoon in late September 1911, the cement dam located a mile above the mill town of Austin, Pennsylvania, gave way, unleashing a wall of water cascading down the narrow valley toward the town and sweeping away everything in its path with the explosive power of a nuclear bomb. Lulled by the assurance of engineering experts that the dam would forever withstand the pressure of the pent-up waters above the town, three thousand unsuspecting resid...