Water and Steel: The 1977 Johnstown Flood and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation

On the evening of July 19, 1977, it began raining over Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and didn't stop until twelve inches of rain had fallen in ten hours. In addition to the rain falling from the skies, water also rushed down the mountain slopes above the city and dams gave way, wreaking devastation. By the following morning, eighty-six people were dead, hundreds were injured, four dams had broken apart or eroded, and residents of the community began cleaning up following the third major flood to strike the city since its founding in the early nineteenth century. Once a vital hub of the US steel industry, the 1977 flood altered Johnstown's economic future. The city that once served as home to more than 16,000 steel workers was forced to reinvent its economy, something that remains a work in progress more than forty years since the deluge of 1977.