Otto Bookstore

Hi, this is Betsy from Otto’s.  One hundred years ago, Austin, Pennsylvania suffered a deadly blow when the dam holding a half a billion gallons of water broke.  The paper company who built the dam had been warned that it was unsafe but they didn’t want to spend the money to improve it.  When the water from the dam descended, it swept ahead of it a five year supply of the company’s lumber.  A forty foot high wall of water and wood rushed through the valley smashing homes, stores and churches.  The people who heard the warnings by phone or by people in the street raced for the high ground.  More than eighty never got there.  When the water subsided, people searching for their bodies were hampered by fires ignited by broken gas lines.  Gale Largey has written a book, The Austin Disaster 1911 as reported in the media.  It’s about as extensive as it can get—photo-copies of newspaper coverage from around the world—the outpouring of help, the heartbreak of the survivors.  Come meet the author October 7, First Friday from 5 to 8 at Otto’s, a booklover’s paradise in the heart of Downtown Williamsport.