House. Select Committee on the Johnstown Flood
biographical statement
On July 28, 1977, eight days after the Johnstown Flood of 1977, the Speaker of the House, K. Leroy Irvis, appointed a special Ad Hoc Committee to investigate how the House of Representatives might alleviate the suffering caused by the natural disaster. Camille George, John Milliron, Stephen Reed, Raphael Musto, Bernard O'Brien, James Eugene Smith, Frank O'Connell to the Committee. The Flood affected Cambria, Somerset, Westmoreland, Indiana, Clearfield, Blair, Bedford, and Jefferson Counties. The city of Jonestown, which was the main focus of the Committee, was located in Cambria County. Over 150,000 Commonwealth residents were left with property damage, ruined homes and missing loved ones after twelve inches of rain fell on the night of July 19th in a four-hour period. The total monetary lass was estimated at over three hundred million dollars. The coal and steel industries in the area were also heavily affected by the flood and last millions of dollars in revenue as a result. Speaker Irvis wanted the Committee members to present a report to the House of Representatives within one month, however several factors, including complex disaster-recovery problems and budget disputes prevented this from happening until December 1977. The Committee members traveled to the flood area on Saturday, July 30th. The Committee spoke with thousands of residents who had been left homeless and attempted to aid in recovery efforts around the eight counties as much as possible during their time there. To supplement their visits to the disaster sites, the Committee also held three days of public hearings in Harrisburg. The committee found that short-term recovery efforts in the counties had been halted by winter weather, and the focus had switched to bringing holiday cheer to the thousands of displaced citizens in the area. Long term recovery planning was underway in many areas, and the need for cooperation with these efforts was being stressed. In addition to finding ways in which they could help alleviate the immediate suffering, the Committee also sought to investigate the factors that caused the flood and the measures that were needed to prevent another such disaster. The area had a history of bad flooding, the first of which occurred in 1889 and killed over 2,200 citizens. Since that time, the flooding of the Conemaugh River had become a continuous problem that was ignored for many years. Another notable flood occurred in the area in 1936.