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Evening Capital Domestic News June 1, 1889
Annapolis, Anne Arundel, Maryland
What is this article about?
Reports from Sang Hollow say 75 to 119 bodies floated past after the reservoir above Johnstown broke, deluging the town; a railroad superintendent telegraphed that Johnstown is "literally wiped out," with driftwood 40 feet high and burning.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 98.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 2.2% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 98.6% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 99.11% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 96.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 92.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
An Early Report.
PITTSBURG, June 1.—A telegraph operator in the Pennsylvania railroad signal tower at Sang Hollow, twelve miles below Johnstown, says that about seventy-five dead bodies have floated past him down the river from Johnstown.
It is stated that the reservoir above Johnstown broke about 5 p. m. yesterday and the water deluged the town, sweeping away houses by scores and drowning probably hundreds of people. Wires are down and no communication can be had with Johnstown. No trains are running east of Blairsville, twenty-five miles west of Johnstown.
Driftwood Forty Feet High.
W. N. Haves, superintendent of the section of the Pennsylvania railroad covered by the flood, telegraphed to Superintendent Pitcairn as follows:
The destruction is terrible. The dump at Johnstown is gone between the bridge and the town west of Johnstown. At some points the tracks are entirely carried away and the roadbed is gone. The river for three-quarters of a mile below the bridge is filled with buildings and driftwood forty feet high and is on fire, burning furiously, and is entirely beyond control. I cannot estimate the amount of damage. Johnstown is literally wiped out.
Pathetic Scenes.
There are many prominent Pittsburg people at Johnstown and a number of residents of that place are here. The scene at the Union depot last night upon the announcement that no more trains would go east was a pathetic one, as a great throng had gathered there filled with anxiety about the friends and eager to get to the scene of the calamity. Only two trains went out.
PITTSBURG, June 1.—A telegraph operator in the Pennsylvania railroad signal tower at Sang Hollow, twelve miles below Johnstown, says that about seventy-five dead bodies have floated past him down the river from Johnstown.
It is stated that the reservoir above Johnstown broke about 5 p. m. yesterday and the water deluged the town, sweeping away houses by scores and drowning probably hundreds of people. Wires are down and no communication can be had with Johnstown. No trains are running east of Blairsville, twenty-five miles west of Johnstown.
Driftwood Forty Feet High.
W. N. Haves, superintendent of the section of the Pennsylvania railroad covered by the flood, telegraphed to Superintendent Pitcairn as follows:
The destruction is terrible. The dump at Johnstown is gone between the bridge and the town west of Johnstown. At some points the tracks are entirely carried away and the roadbed is gone. The river for three-quarters of a mile below the bridge is filled with buildings and driftwood forty feet high and is on fire, burning furiously, and is entirely beyond control. I cannot estimate the amount of damage. Johnstown is literally wiped out.
Pathetic Scenes.
There are many prominent Pittsburg people at Johnstown and a number of residents of that place are here. The scene at the Union depot last night upon the announcement that no more trains would go east was a pathetic one, as a great throng had gathered there filled with anxiety about the friends and eager to get to the scene of the calamity. Only two trains went out.
What sub-type of article is it?
Disaster
Weather
Death Or Funeral
What keywords are associated?
Johnstown Flood
Sang Hollow
Reservoir Break
Driftwood
Pittsburg
What entities or persons were involved?
W. N. Haves
Superintendent Pitcairn
Where did it happen?
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
Domestic News Details
Primary Location
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
Event Date
June 1
Key Persons
W. N. Haves
Superintendent Pitcairn
Outcome
dozens of bodies seen floating; hundreds feared drowned; johnstown wiped out; driftwood on fire