Col. Elias J. Unger, a retired Pittsburgh hotel owner, was the president and manager of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club, northeast of Johnstown.

When the club-owned dam broke on May 31, 1889, the resulting flood caused the deaths of more than 2,200 people. "A STUPENDOUS CALAMITY," the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette reported the next morning.

Unger briefly became the public face for the publicity-shy private club, whose members included Andrew W. Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Phipps, Robert Pitcairn and Andrew Carnegie.

"When the heavy masonry gave way from the immense pressure of the pent up waters, and I had done all in my powers to avert the fearful disaster, I was thoroughly exhausted," Unger told a reporter for The Pittsburg Press on June 5, 1889. "I returned to the house and was completely prostrated."

The story that Unger related showed him to be energetic, conscientious and quick thinking. He also shaded the truth to deflect any blame for the disaster from himself, the elite club and its wealthy members.

Cambria County had been deluged by spring rains starting the day before the dam broke, turning rivulets into streams and creeks into torrents. Millions of tons of water had been impounded behind the dam in Lake Conemaugh -- almost three miles long and as much as a mile wide -- on the Little Conemaugh River. Lake Conemaugh was at the top of a narrow valley about 17 miles upstream from Johnstown.

"It was raining hard on Friday [May 31], and as I lived within a short distance of the dam, I put on my gum coat and went out to look at it," Unger told the newspaper. "The lake was then rising at the rate of four inches an hour, which is quite fast for a body of water like that."

Engineers, historians and the National Park Service, which maintains the Johnstown Flood National Memorial, point to multiple causes for the failure of the dam. Those cited include the unprecedented heavy rainfall, hillsides denuded by clear-cutting of trees, a faulty initial dam design, poor maintenance and the removal of discharge pipes that made it impossible to lower the water level of the lake.

Witnesses to the events said that another reason the lake had risen so fast was that a weir, made of wood and wire, had been built over part of the dam's spillway to keep game fish from escaping. Once the weir became partially blocked by debris, it reduced the amount of water that could flow down the spillway and diminish the pressure behind the earthen dam.

While Unger several times in the interview rejected any suggestion that the weir had been part of the problem, he, nevertheless, said he ordered "laborers --10 or 15 in all -- to cut a new sluiceway at the west end of the embankment."

"They worked incessantly, and the water kept coming up all the time ... about 11 o'clock the flood began to assume such dangerous proportions that I ordered a civil engineer, Mr. [John] Parke, to take a horse and gallop through the valley and warn the people of the impending danger. He left in haste and did his duty, returning in time to help with the digging of the new outlet.

"By the time he returned the water was beginning to flow over the dam. The new sluice was discharging a fearful volume of water, and I was advised by many of the people not to dig it or have it dug.

"But I am positive that by it being done, the dam was kept from bursting for fully an hour.

"We also had a portion of the roadway on top of the [dam] ploughed up, which formed a breastwork. This was intended to keep the water back and divert the current toward the sluice way. We had piled the dirt to a height of several feet, and this way held the water in check for more than an hour.

"At about 3:15 the dam burst, while we were still at work.

"The reports that the weir or outlet for the water in the embankment was closed or clogged up is not true," Unger insisted. "It is ... very wide -- wide enough to allow all the water to flow out under ordinary circumstances. A screen was placed in the outlet, but that was a small concern ... the remainder of the space was entirely clear and the screen was only heavy enough to keep the fish back."

While both individuals and companies sued the club and its members for damages after the flood, courts ruled, and at least one jury agreed, that the dam's collapse had been a "visitation of providence" -- an act of God. No one ever collected any money.