ABSTRACT
Johnstown Flood, Pennsylvania, 1889 Stage 1 of the Disaster You are the mayor of a town of 30,000 people. Your town mainly consists of bluecollar steel workers that are of German descent. Unfortunately, your town has been built on a floodplain where two rivers meet and the riverbanks have been narrowed to give the town more land to construct residential housing and other buildings. This leads to some minor flooding from time to time. In addition, the South Fork Dam located upstream needs maintenance badly, but is not being maintained by the local hunting and fishing lodge that is responsible for its upkeep (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2007a).
