Published: July 15, 2007 11:15 pm      

Faces of the Flood: ‘Good people stepped up to the plate’

Latest in a series on the 1977 Johnstown Flood

On the morning of July 20, 1977, Darby Sprincz stood on the railroad tracks and surveyed the floodwaters that had engulfed his hometown.

“At that point, you start to think about the history of Johnstown. ‘Flood-free,’ but here we are again,” Sprincz said.

“I was completely amazed by what I was looking at,” he said.

“You could see roofs of cars everywhere.”

Sprincz was 20 years old at the time, a laborer and truck driver in his second year with the city’s Public Works Department.

He has spent his entire career in that department and now serves as its director. But Sprincz never again has seen anything like the damage and chaos he witnessed on that summer day three decades ago.

“I just hope I don’t have to go through it again,” he said.

When the rains began late July 19, Sprincz was at home in the city’s Morrellville section watching Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.

He later decided to drive a friend home to Lower Yoder Township. On the way, he noticed that flooding had begun on Barron Avenue and that a small stream called Elk Run had overrun its banks.

Sprincz decided to stay at his friend’s home rather than attempt to navigate the waterlogged streets.

“I figured I’d just go to work in the morning,” he said.

It didn’t happen that way. In the early morning hours, his friend’s sister arrived, soaking wet. She had walked from Broad Street, where her car was marooned.

“She said, ‘There’s a flood,’ ” Sprincz recalled.

He managed to make his way home by a circuitous route on higher ground. But he had to wait a few days for the water to recede before returning to work for the city.

Officials had set up headquarters in the tall, sturdy Swank Building downtown.

“We just set out to see what we could do, and it was just overwhelming,” Sprincz said.

“We started to import all the help we could find.”

Governmental agencies and the National Guard were joined by a fleet of contractors and machinery. Sprincz said public-works staff split up to cover various neighborhoods and supervise contractors.

“We had very little equipment of our own to use,” Sprincz said, noting that city employees had been able to save some four-wheel-drive vehicles by moving them to higher ground on the night of the flood.

The cleanup job was massive.

Sprincz still marvels at the sheer power of rushing water, recalling huge chunks of upturned asphalt in the Moxham neighborhood.

All across the city, a layer of thick, drying mud clogged the streets. Piles of debris further complicated the cleanup effort.

“Tree branches, household appliances, household goods – everything imaginable,” Sprincz said.

Also, the city’s sewers had overflowed.

“The smell was there, but you got used to it,” Sprincz said.

For weeks, he and his fellow city employees logged 16-hour days in the summer heat.

Looking back, Sprincz has nothing but praise for the diverse labor force that helped pull Johnstown back to its feet.

“A lot of good people stepped up to the plate and did fantastic things,” he said, adding that the city’s blue-collar work ethic rubbed off on many who arrived from outside the area to help.

“When they left, they were pretty much Johnstowners.”